Anti Smoking Advertisements

The Anti Smoking Lobby.


I'm a tobacco smoker and have been for more than 50 years. I know it's stupid and I know it doesn't do my health any favours and yes, I know I should give it up. I've tried on several occasions and I've even succeeded a couple of times - for a while. I know it caused my Peripheral Vascular Disease and my Doctor tells me constantly that I'm a prime candidate for  something called COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. I wheeze, and I cough, and I'm used of my mouth feeling like the bottom of a cocky's cage when I wake up in the morning. You'd think that, being a reasonably lucid and intelligent human being, I'd take the hint and chuck the smokes. I'm trying, and from time to time I even manage to cut down for a while.


I've tried the gum, and the patches, and my Doctor even prescribed some god awful tablets that gave me all sorts of nightmares and flashbacks to places I'd rather not revisit. I've contacted the Anti Smoking Campaigns and they've sent me out their mostly useless literature that makes some appeals to my better nature and my "will power" and provides all sorts of forms and leaflets for me to read and/or fill out. In the long run it makes me wonder if they are really fair dinkum!


I am absolutely fed up with the anti smoking campaign advertisements. They are all highly emotional appeals to give up the habit. We have a small, unbelievably sweet, child telling her father how she played a game and her father SHOULD have been there! The poor bloody bloke is flat on his back and breathing oxygen through a tube. Just the sort of thing to make you feel better! All the rest of the adds are along the same theme. Smoking is a burden on your loved ones and you should be a good boy, or girl and give it up.


This is undoubtedly true BUT the anti smoking campaigns appear to forget one very important fact. SMOKING IS ADDICTIVE AND MOST SMOKERS WOULD LIKE TO GIVE IT UP. They spend millions of tax payers money on these adds and go around patting themselves self righteously on the back. BIG BLOODY DEAL. I wonder if perhaps the money would be better spent on a bit of honest research into EFFECTIVE ways to give up nicotine addiction. I can't help wondering if the amount of tax the government collects off tobacco doesn't in some way influence just how effective these anti smoking campaigns can be!