Effective tools, or too shocking?
Cigarette smoking kills more than 400,000 Americans every year, including deaths linked to secondhand smoke.
So the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pulling out all the stops to try to get people to stop smoking.
It’s just released some very graphic ads it hopes will help people quit, or turn off others from even starting.
The $54 million campaign is as shocking as it is controversial - it tries to scare smokers into kicking the habit.
In England, another ad is tackling the difficult subject of “teen date rape” in an equally graphic manner. It’s called, “If You Could See Yourself.”
The question is: Do ads like these really work, or go too far?
Adult Cigarette Smoking in the United States
An estimated 45.3 million people, or 19.3% of all adults (aged 18 years or older), in the United States smoke cigarettes. Cigarette smoking is more common among men (21.5%) than women (17.3%).
Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for approximately 443,000 deaths, or 1 of every 5 deaths, in the United States each year.
By Gender
21.5% of adult men
17.3% of adult women
By Age
20.1% of adults aged 18–24 years
22.0% of adults aged 25–44 years
21.1% of adults aged 45–64 years
9.5% of adults aged 65 years and older
“CBS This Morning: Saturday” co-hosts Rebecca Jarvis and Ben Tracy screened some of the ads with “CBS This Morning” contributor Lee Woodruff and Matt MacDonald, executive creative director of JWT Advertising, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies.
To see the ads and the discussion, click on the video in the player above, but be warned: You may find the ads disturbing.
Some Quick Smoking Facts
- Cigarette smoking has been identified as the most important source of preventable morbidity and premature mortality in the United States and the world.
- Smoking-related diseases cause an estimated 440,000 American deaths each year.
- Smoking costs the United States over $150 billion annually in health care costs.
- A 2004 Study by the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion found that cigarette smoke contains over 4,800 chemicals, 69 of which are known to cause cancer.
- Women account for 39 percent of all smoking deaths.