If you think the anti-smoking ads currently being run by the New York City Health Department are intense (surely you've seen them? With the pancreatic cancer?), wait till you get a load of the new anti-smoking campaign out of the CDC. They just hit the interwebs and, well, the first federal campaign to target smoking certainly doesn't pull its punches. Hey, if you can't put graphic warnings on cigarette packs, you gotta put 'em somewhere!
The campaign is relatively modest (only $54 million) but it makes its points far more effectively than, say, those awful "Truth" ads. Here, for instance, are some tips on living with a stoma (big one: careful when you shower):
And here are some people who lost legs and fingers because of smoking telling you to quit:
And, well, this ad featuring Terri the former smoker will make you want to curl into a ball:
The campaign isn't just videos (though there are more here), it also includes print ads and a website along with free help available at 1-800-QUIT-NOW. The CDC has high hopes for it helping people stop smoking: "We estimate that this campaign will help about 50,000 smokers to quit smoking," the CDC's director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden said Wednesday. "And that will translate not only into thousands who will not die from smoking but it will pay for itself in a few years in reduced health costs."
Inspired to maybe put that smoke down? If you live in New York you've got one more day to sign up for the city's current free nicotine patch and gum giveaway at nycquits.org. We just did (maybe this time will stick?).
