Anti Smoking Campaign Essay

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Topic: Argumentive Essay: Are Anti-Smoking Ads Effective
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Date: 29th June, 2014
Introduction
Per the Center for Disease Control (2009), in the United States smoking of cigarettes is the leading cause of death that can be prevented (Lee, Cappella and Lerman 527). Considerable efforts are being employed to motivate smokers to quit, former smokers not to relapse, and the non-smokers not to start. Antismoking campaigns through advertisements have been used to conduct such campaigns and whereas on one end have been proven as effective, on the other end they have been seen to, in fact, promote smoking in various ways. This paper, therefore, provides a discussion of the successes of the impact (negative and positive) anti-smoking campaigns in the United States.
A week before Terrie Hall the notable face from CDC’s Tips From Former Smokers campaign died, the campaigners remarked on how her story with cancer battles and other stories about her life inspired over 1 million Americans. Their leader reported that this was a number that they did not project (McGill 1). The fact that such an impact was made by only a single person, a single campaign, and one advert, indicates the immense power and impact that anti-smoking advertisements can have in promoting quitting (Mcgill 1).
This is evident since on August of the same year an announcement was made that the campaign through Hall’s advertisement inspired approximately 1.6 million people were inspired to quit. After her death from head and neck cancer that was attributed to smoking, according to The Lancet’s research, advertisements that included former smokers inspired about 200,000 individuals to quit and estimated that approximately 100,000 of them are likely to quit permanently (Mcgill 1).
According to The Lancet Study, Cigarette smoking takes the lives of approximately 440, 000 people in the United States alone. This is, in a...