And still you won't QUIT!
September 23rd 2008 10:31
Signature Tune
From the New York Times:
In yet another step in a campaign to scare smokers into quitting — a campaign that has included a man who breathes through a hole in his throat, a woman who is missing four fingers because of smoking, and operations to remove fatty deposits from the brain and amputate a gangrenous foot — the city is now giving out matchbooks. Yes, matchbooks.
New York City Department of Health
A warning on one of the free matchbooks being given out in certain sections of the city.
But you might not want to use these matchbooks to light up a smoke. They carry various grisly images with the stark words “Cigarettes Are Eating You Alive.” The “Gum Disease” version shows decayed teeth, yellowed and blackened. Other matchbooks show large, painful tumors and smoke-ravaged lungs.
The matchbooks, part of the “Eating You Alive” advertising campaign unveiled this year, are being distributed free at 132 cigarette retailers in the South Bronx, central and East Harlem and northern and central Brooklyn — neighborhoods where smoking has not decreased to the degree it has in other parts of the city.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, commissioner of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the scary matchbooks were the next best alternative to putting grisly advertisements directly on cigarette packs themselves. Countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile and Thailand have done so.
“Throat cancer, gum disease, blackened lungs — these are the realities of smoking,” Dr. Frieden said in a statement. “Many countries put these images right on the cigarette pack, where they belong. While the U.S. hasn’t done this yet — and New York City is pre-empted from requiring cigarette package labels — we are putting these images where New Yorkers buy cigarettes, just before they light up, in the hope they’ll think twice about the decision to continue smoking.”
The United States began putting warnings on cigarette packs in 1966, after the first surgeon general’s report on smoking, but a labeling law enacted in 1984 requires only an inconspicuous text box on the side of cigarette packs and in advertisements.
Sarah B. Perl, the health department’s assistant commissioner for tobacco control, said the advertisements were intended to counter the “glamorous, healthful images” of smoking advanced by the tobacco industry.
Dr. Susan D. Karabin, the immediate past president of the American Academy of Periodontology, said in a phone interview: “I applaud the health department for doing this. These images are accurate: Smoking interferes with healing, with the immune system, and if you have periodontal disease — a chronic, low-grade infection — it exacerbates it, and makes the body less able to deal with that infection. Smoking is also considered an independent risk factor for bone loss. Smokers lose more teeth and have worse periodontal disease than nonsmokers.”
Dr. Karabin, who has a private practice on the Upper East Side and is not involved in the city’s advertising campaign, added, “Unfortunately, I think it does take scare tactics to get people to stop smoking.”
Well you can't say you don't know, can you?
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