Smokeout Nov. 17

FREE Louboutin heels! How about two free pairs? Ladies, why wait for that day you get that first legitimate paycheck to splurge $3,650 on some well-deserved heels to complete your power outfit? You’re spending the money already. Seriously, all you have to do is give up your annual $3,650 addiction. All you have to do is give up smoking. This deal is a deal of a lifetime.
 
This Thursday, November 17, marks the American Cancer Association’s 36^th Great American Smokeout. Established nationwide in November 1977, this event strives to educate and inform the public about the dangers of tobacco use and the challenge of quitting. The event was first developed in 1971 in Randolph, Massachusetts by Arthur P. Mullaney, who asked people to give up smoking for one day and donate the money they would have otherwise used for cigarettes to a high school scholarship fund. This successful initiative has caught on and become a national campaign urging smokers to accept the challenge of quitting for one day.

Not only does this campaign spotlight the hazards of tobacco, but is also now the driving force behind the Cultural Revolution in tobacco control. Its main goals are to revolutionize the age-old acceptance of smoking as a cultural norm. “[We want to] position it how it actually is—a killer of nearly half a million Americans per year,” says Dileep G. Bal, MD, MS, MPH, national president of the American Cancer Society.

And how are they campaigning to educate and redirect a new generation of smokers? The exact same way the cigarettes got their loyal customers hooked in the peak years of the mid 1960s: advertising. In 1965, 1 in 2.39 adults smoked, and for those of you who watch AMC’s Mad Men, you know just how much cigarettes took over TV, magazine and newspaper ads and even on baseball cards. They used the finest of advertising skills to explode an enterprise and establish a smoking culture. We all know the story of how the heartthrobs of the past (i.e. Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy) transformed smoking into an appealing display of sensuality, but it is interesting to juxtapose the current campaign strategies to those of a previous era. In an attempt to combat the glamour established around this deadly habit, contemporary ads have resorted to the power of the scare tactic.
 

The only way to rid the image of sexy Marilyn Monroe taking a puff while reclining on a sofa is to assault the mind with a cancer ridden woman taking a drag through a hole carved through her trachea. I applaud the American Cancer Society’s recognition of a generation that looks up to popular culture and their social icons while worrying about the transience of age, beauty and money. In a sense, antismoking ads must be the craftiest out there.