It shows images of a young pretty girl, from circa 70’s/80’s high school, cheerleading, homecoming court. This gravelly sounding voice talks about how fun her teenage years were and how stupid she was for taking up smoking.
The next shot shows her in recent times. No hair, skin and bones, partially missing jaw and tracheotomy.
She says it breaks her heart when she sees teenagers smoking.
She died at age 53.
It grabbed my attention and I watched saddened and horrified. Even my 5 year old son stopped what he was doing to listen, than asked me why that voice sounded so scary.
I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m so glad after 23 years I conquered the nicotine beast. It left me with minor asthma but otherwise, after more than 10 years smoke free I think I’m physically up to par as most non smokers.
Bless this lady who put herself out there on national TV, allowing herself to be shown in a deteriorated state in the hopes of saving some lives.
Anyone seen this yet? if you have kids, did they see it? Do you think it may influence some kids to never smoke?
Not very many, sorry to say. At the age that woman started smoking, most kids think they’re immortal or at least that it won’t happen to them. And the odds are that nothing that grievous will happen. A premature heart attack or slowly disabling emphysema are much more likely, just not dramatic enough for a public service ad.*
I suspect stuff that’s gruesome just gets teenage smokers to change the channel. You need respected adults to reinforce the point of the PSA.
*I always liked the idea of an anti-smoking ad featuring a prototypical New York cab driver - unattractive, wrinkly and with nicotine-stained teeth, waving a cigarette and saying “By me, it’s Camels.”
Problem I have with these types of anti-smoking ads is that cigarettes are not crack or meth. And if you go too far in trying to ‘scare kids straight’ in regards to something you run the risk of ‘Refer Madness Syndrome’. IOW kids will believe that you’re exaggerating the dangers for shock effect (and they’d be right) and it will have the opposite result: They will dismiss all the dangers as being propaganda and it will make smoking seem ***more ***cool by defying them.
Are they even still showing that one? Hasn’t it been around several years now?
The latest one I saw was one that started out saying how funny everyone finds farting to be. But then you end up with cancer and need a colostomy bag.
Not nearly as effective, since the connection to smoking isn’t made clearly. Kindo of comes across as a psa shaming people into not laughing at farts. That would never work; farting is always funny.
The whole series, to me, shows we’re starting to jump the shark in basically making the same point we always did. I haven’t talked to any young kids about them but a couple of the middle to late teens I know (or am related to) think of them more as jokes than something to take seriously. Some of those people smoke but most do not and some of those consider it (smoking) flat-out stupid; in other words their reaction isn’t based on how they feel about smoking itself.
I’m not sure there was more than one ad. As I recall there are 6+ with different people and a long and short version of each one. Also some where they basically combine a couple of the shorts together. As an adult who gave up cigarettes (but not tobacco altogether) ages ago I can appreciate the thought that went into them. But if the target audience is kids I’m not sure they are hitting the mark. But compared to how some of my other tax dollars are spent ------- can we get them 24/7 on some station somewhere?
