Gorey Anti Smoking Ads....

[ZedBloke]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20805059
Waste of time and money? We must be down to the hard core addicts by now, they must know the dangers. I suppose these may serve to stop the kids starting but going by the numbers of young fools I see smoking probably not.

[sandyRoe]

Sqad, not all the people who play Russian Roulette shoot themselves.

[Sqad]

sandy....quite.......but we don't say playing Russian Roulette KILLS...... because it doesn't, but we do say that smoking causes lung cancer......which is not entirely true.

[ummmm]

Well my grandad was on 60 a day. He got knocked over and died at the age of 83. He was going to the shop to buy a packet of fags!!!

That's a true story...

My other grandad smoked between 80-100 a day. He was told by his doctor that he'd probably be dead within the year and stopped straight away. That was 35 years ago..

[sandyRoe]

So, we're getting conflicting advice here. Was my struggle with the demon weed in vain? Should I start again on, say, a modest 40 a day?

[Sqad]

sandy....LOL........LOL...........;-)

[jake-the-peg]

The psychology isn't right

They marketed a brand of cigarettes called DEATH

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/death-cigarettes

They sold loads of them

They looked cool

They need to be made uncool -maybe if they all came in a Barbie pink wrapper

[Wharton]

My grandad went into the shop to get fags and my grandmum waited outside for him. The sign above the shop fell, hit my grandmum on the head and killed her - not true, I just made it up :-)

[ummmm]

Mine is true. He was in intensive care for a month and they did think he'd survive but he got an infection and died.

[Carakeel]

I'm afraid I do not agree with focusing on lung cancer in any case. I don't think enough is done to tell the whole true story about the dangers. How many people are aware that every time they inhale while smoking, brain cells die! This is permanent damage and can attack anywhere in the brain! This was explained to me and shown to me on scans by one of the world's leading Neurosurgeons as well as several leading oncologists. I believe, as did my son, that if youngsters were made more aware of the effect smoking can have on their brain, they may take this a bit more seriously than lung cancer, which many seem to relate to older aged smokers. Perhaps we should be introducing primary school children to the concept of "preventative medicine" / "What we can do to stay healthy". This could be done in a playful manner they would understand, so that by the time they come to secondary school they might not be quite so tempted to do things like smoke. I know many will think this a silly concept, but we teach our little children to tell right from wrong from the start of their lives, so why not this? This would be a good way to spend the tax payers money, would it not?

[pdq1]

Smoking kills far more people than gun tragedies yet we don't ban the sale of cigarettes. I wonder if the tax income from sales has anything to do with it.

Sureley the money saved on treating those with lung cancer could reduce our NHS budget more than the tax we collect?

[sandyRoe]

I think smoking also plays a big part in causing heart disease. As well as cancer, it causes other serious problems with the lungs.

[Quizmonster]

As you say, Sqad, it is not really accurate to say baldly, "Smoking causes cancer," because it clearly does not always do so.
I don't know how funds devoted to finding a cure for cancer are spent but I wonder how much of it goes into finding out why so many smokers DON'T get it as opposed to finding treatments for those who do.
As others have suggested above, my father and all of my uncles were lifelong smokers and none of them died of the disease.

[Zeuhl]

The issue regarding tax revenue is not whether the cost to the NHS or the tobacco yield is the greater.

The issue is that if every smoker stopped today, the tax revenue would dry up within 3 months.

However, the costs to the NHS would continue for 50 or 60 years.

[ZedBloke]

yes but even if you ignore the indirect costs of smoking and believe the varous figures, say 3bn net from duty then that amounts to a very small portion of the total tax take. Easily recoverable. In reality though the often ignored but expensive indirect costs of smoking would pretty well go away at once so I'd imagine that we'd probably be no worse off.

[ZedBloke]

Also we seem to be getting carried away with semantics. Smoking does not always cause lung cancer and lung cancer is not always caused by smoking the health effects of smoking are many and various, As are the causes of all cancer. It is however more likely that a smoker will contract lung cancer. My mum died of lung cancer a couple of years ago, I cannot remember a time in her life when she was not desperate to give up, many, many attempts, but she was hopelessly adicted. She smoked from the age of about 10 to about 69. I often wonder how long she would have lived as a non smoker.

[BRIGHT SPARK]

...modern living is the biggest killer

[cathfromsaron]

BTW nicotine is actually the only one of the 2004 ingredients in cigs which is not fatal in itself (BUT it is addictive)!

[cathfromsaron]

also, i agree you may not get cancers from smoking BUT 'only' COPD or other illnesses, but these can be really debilitating and shorten your life anyway ...

[LazyGun]

Its important to drive the message home, and continue with the message for new generations. so the more explicit the adverts the better.

The link between lung cancer and smoking is very strong. Of all lung cancer cases, only around 10% are in people who are non-smokers. To suggest that smoking is not a cause of cancer is an incorrect message, and a dangerous one at that.

Smoking is far and away the most important preventable cause of cancer in the world.

[Sqad]

LazyGun.....I agree with almost all you say......but we have a problem....

\\\\Even though smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer, the majority of people currently diagnosed with lung cancer do not smoke; 50% of these cancers occur in former smokers, and 15% in those who have never smoked at all.\\\\

I reiterate...we cannot say that smoking causes cancer........we have to be honest to be credible as a profession.