CDC Unveils New Anti-Smoking Ads Featuring Real Smokers
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Credit: James Gathany/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have launched a new set of anti-smoking ads featuring real smokers who are living with the long-term health effects of smoking and secondhand smoke exposure.
The “Tips From Former Smokers” campaign was first launched in 2012. “Since its launch,” the CDC says, “the Tips campaign has featured compelling stories of former smokers living with smoking-related diseases and disabilities and the toll that smoking-related illnesses have taken on them.”
In September 2013, the Lancet medical journal published an article saying that the Tips campaign has motivated about 1.6 million smokers to attempt to quit smoking, with at least 100,000 U.S. smokers expected to quit permanently as a result of the campaign.
The CDC posted videos featuring 27 real people on their website. “I smoked and got macular degeneration,” a woman named Marlene says in one of the videos. “So I don’t see very well.”
After describing the first time she received one of the medical procedures she goes through as a result of her disease, Marlene says she “went home and I felt miserable, and I said to myself, ‘Why the hell did I ever smoke?'”
“I would never have smoked if I knew that I was gonna be going through this,” she says.
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