CAN WE SCARE SMOKERS INTO QUITTING?

Graphic warnings won’t deter smokers
Fairfield Daily Republic June 23, 2011 By Kelvin Wade

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration unveiled nine new graphic images and warnings that will be required to appear on packages of cigarettes by September 2012. There are graphic photos such as diseased lungs and gums and a corpse. The warnings will say things such as “Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease;” “Cigarettes cause cancer” and “Cigarettes cause strokes and heart disease.” Each pack will also sport an 800 number to help smokers quit smoking.

The intent is to lower the 20 percent of Americans who still smoke. Unfortunately, this latest gimmick is doomed to failure.

When I was younger my dad smoked big fat stinky cigars. The worst was when we’d be riding in his car, windows up, and the heater on while he puffed on his nauseating stogie.

In junior high, at Grange in Ms. Hall’s health class, she showed us gruesome images of diseased lungs from smoking. And there were anti-smoking PSAs on TV like Yul Brynner’s famous posthumous one in the 1980s. In addition to those messages, two of my brothers started smoking cigarettes and I couldn’t stand the smell.

Knowing the risks, and being annoyed by smoke for years in my home, it’s funny that I started smoking cigars. People know the risks yet they start smoking anyway.

But anecdotal evidence only goes so far. In the 2008 book “Buyology: Truth and Lies about what we buy,” by Martin Lindstrom, the author devotes a chapter to a neuromarketing experiment he participated in with more than 2,000 volunteers from the United States, England, Germany, Japan and China. The experiment hooked volunteers up to a functional MRI machine to see how their brains responded to smoking warnings.

Keep in mind that countries such as Canada, Thailand, Brazil, Australia and others have had graphic images on their packs of cigarettes for years.

The results showed that warning labels and graphic images had zero effect on smoking. Worse, the warnings stimulated a part of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens, thought to control cravings, pleasure and rewards. We’re drawn to risk.

Think about it. A picture of someone smoking out of a hole in their throat on a package of cigarettes will be shocking the first time a smoker sees it. What about the 20th time? Will they even notice it anymore? Will smokers just buy the pack with the least objectionable image?

It’s similar to how people believed if we required restaurants to list the calories of food, people would cut back on their consumption. I haven’t seen any evidence that has happened.

We continue to be drawn to high calorie oddities such as KFC’s Double Down or this week’s viral video: deep-fried Kool-Aid balls.

So what stopped my cigar smoking? Was it fear of mouth cancer? Fear of health problems? No, it was the constant jacking up of tobacco taxes. And while education is important, I believe it’s the high economic and legal cost of smoking that has motivated most people to quit or at least cut back. It’s harder and harder to find places to smoke.

Once again we may be embarking on something with the loftiest of intentions, only to see it have little effect on people lighting up. Peace.
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ADDITIONAL NOTES: If this worked, why wouldn't we just require McDonalds to make Ronald McDonald 400lbs.? Yeah, have Ronald be 400lbs and get around on a scooter sucking on an oxygen tank. And maybe have Jack, the Jack in the Box clown, be diabetic. Maybe have a little syringe and bottle of insulin on every bag.

And on every beer and liquor bottle why don't we have pictures of car crashes, handcuffs or flaccid penises. How many people are going to want to put that bottle to their mouth with a flaccid penis on it?

On every lotto ticket there should be a photo of someone being struck by lightning or a picture of someone flushing money down a toilet.

And maybe before some dumb reality TV show is about to air we require them to show a quick clip of a post-lobotomy R P McMurphy from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

This gimmicky stuff isn't going to work. I know the hardcore anti-smokers are going to love it because they'd champion anything as long as it's anti-smoking. But I'm kind of a stickler when it comes to things like this. I like to do what works. We've got much of the rest of the world already doing these ads and they're smoking like chimneys.

You're talking about a product that people are addicted to. Putting a skull and crossbones on every package of heroin isn't going to stop a heroin addict from shooting it. Slap six pieces of cheese on a triple burger and call it the Cardiac Killer and I'm ordering one and telling my friends.

Human beings do risky, nutty, not-in-our-self-interest things all the time. I don't know why we have that in our makeup. We crane our necks to look at accidents. We like rollercoasters and scary movies. We gamble. We text and drive. We do pretty much everything and drive, really. Prominent men tweet pics of their schmekels. People cheat on their spouses risking disease and destroying their families. Humans do lots of risky, stupid things. And a last second glimpse of a photo saying, "Don't do that stupid thing" is no match for the endorphins that stupid thing is set to unleash.