Tips From Former Smokers (Campaign) Report

Analysing pro-smoking and anti-smoking campaigns reveals that the two are very common. Over the years, the campaigns have led to both the increase and the decrease of smoking all over the world. The drives use different strategies to send out their messages.

This essay conducts an analysis of anti-smoking campaigns. It discusses the theories that have been employed in pushing forward the campaigns. Moreover, the paper analyses some of the strategies that governments have been using to reduce smoking in their countries.

History of anti-smoking campaigns

The history of anti-smoking goes hand in hand with that of smoking. The two operations have always borrowed from each other in order to sway the public to either side. In the recent past, many smoking drives have focused on scaring people in an attempt to make them stop smoking.

Bektas, Ozturk, and Armstrong (2010) assert that numerous campaigns list the side effects of smoking as a way of telling people why they should quit the practice. The use of fear to appeal to some aspects of emotions is called the ‘Fear Appeal’ (Gurtman 2009). It is arguable that this form of campaign works.

Kotler and Keller (2009) reveal that the smoking drives took the initiatives a notch higher and introduced more pronounced warnings on the dangers of smoking. The warnings were printed on the cigarette packs, yet they did not stop people from buying cigarettes.

Kaynak (2013) argues that threatening people to quit smoking was the worst form of anti-smoking promotion because it could be proven wrong. There were people who would come out and claim that they had been smoking for a very long time, yet they were not sick.

People also came up with different tips on how to avoid getting sick from smoking.

The second type of anti-smoking campaign employed was the use of celebrities to encourage people to stop smoking. The ‘smoking is cool’ drive initiated by the cigarette companies used well-known persons in the society to encourage tobacco use (Iverson 2013).

They would take, for example, a musician and make an advert around the musician, while still making the artist smoke their brand. The initiative was very successful in the younger adults. Consequently, the anti-campaign model tried to use the same strategy.

They took celebrities and showed how they had prospered without smoking (Kerin 2012).

In the same breath, an adverse campaign was made to guilt trip cigarette smokers. The anti-campaign showed how secondary smoke affected other people. It was also in the same initiative where pregnant women were informed of the dangers that smoking caused to their unborn children.

Paetzold (2010) agrees that it was one of the best anti-smoking initiatives ever created. The main pro of this drive was the guilt tripping it made the smokers experience. They were informed that they were not only destroying their health, but they were also causing harm to the health of others.

Whereas there are those who quit smoking entirely, others were restricted to smoking in particular areas, commonly referred to as the ‘smoking zones’. Smoking areas made it nearly impossible for the smokers to influence other people to start smoking (Oberecker & Diamantopoulos 2011).

It is arguable that the anti-smoking initiatives have helped many people stop smoking. Even though some of the campaigns mentioned above were not considered successful due to failure to record high numbers of quitters, they helped people stop smoking in one way or another.

Such initiatives reduced smoking in two ways; first, they encouraged the non-smokers not to start smoking by making them too scared of the side effects. They also saw their role models discourage smoking and they were not pulled into the frenzy of cigarette smoking (Shankarmahesh, 2006).

The second way was through encouraging smokers to quit. The anti-smoking promotions would often give out free advice on what could be done to help a person quit smoking. At times, they would provide smokers with contacts of doctors and health professionals, who would help them quit smoking (Marshall 2002).

Current statistics

Currently, many people are open to stopping smoking altogether. Smoking is not perceived as cool anymore; thus, many youths are avoiding the habit. Presently, there are 42 million persons who smoke in the United States of America. They represent approximately 17% of the American population.

About 9 million of the total number of smokers in the US suffers from health conditions associated with smoking. In the same breath, 440,000 of the 9 million people die on a yearly basis due to the health complications related to smoking. On a global scale, 1,000 people start smoking on a daily basis (Josiassen 2011).

In addition, 5 million people die on a yearly basis all over the world due to smoking related complications.

The current statistics show that the rates of smoking have gone down. However, there are still many people who struggle to quit smoking, with an equally high number of persons starting to smoke on a daily basis. Blythe (2013) argues that currently there is one highly influential factor that makes people smoke; peer pressure.

It suffices to mention that those who fall into the peer pressure trap usually have peers who also try cigarettes for the first time. However, there are cases of people having friends who are older than them and have been smoking. The elder entice the younger friends to start smoking.

Other factors that have been attributed to smoking are anger and frustration. These emotions may arise from a number of life experiences. Similarly, the smoking of other drugs like marijuana has also encouraged cigarette smoking. Marijuana is a common drug among students on campus; thus, they also tend to start smoking cigarettes.

Relevant theories used in anti-smoking campaigns

The various anti-smoking campaigns used employ several theories to get people to listen and understand the message being sent. It is crucial to explain the role of communication in the anti-smoking campaigns before a discussion of the relevant theories is presented.

Framing of messages is important in persuasion. The anti-smoking campaigns in the past wanted to persuade people to stop smoking. Thus, the process of communication was vital in ensuring that the messages were decoded as planned. For instance, the ‘fear appeal’ was used to persuade the audience in the first anti-campaign.

The Rossiter-Percy model was employed because it applied to the negative motivation, in this case, fear. In such situations, the messages were framed to invoke fear. During the campaigns, pictures were used to show how unhealthy one could become as a result of smoking.

The campaign agents also used symptoms and diseases to scare people from smoking cigarettes. Additionally, doctors would be asked to talk about the procedures one had to go through when they had a health problem associated with smoking. All these were done to invoke fear among the audience.

The messages were framed differently in the second anti-campaign strategy, where there was the use of celebrities and other well-known people to advise people to stop smoking. The messages in such cases did not necessarily try to instil fear among the audiences. Instead, they attempted to show how ‘cool’ one became when they did not smoke.

For instance, a celebrity would be told to say, “I cannot date a smoker because his breath smells bad”. Such a message would be framed to emphasise class. Thus, it appeared that everyone who smoked was beneath a particular class; the class of the celebrity. In addition, the message indicated that people who smoked had bad breath.

This part of the message told a non-smoker to avoid interacting with a smoker, thereby encouraging them to quit smoking.

The third anti-smoking campaign also framed its messages differently in order to reach out to more people.

An example of a campaign message that was used in guilt tripping smokers was the picture of a man smoking and the smoke being inhaled by babies, toddlers, pregnant women, the elderly, and the society as a whole (Ettenson & Klein 2011).

The picture made the person looking at it to feel guilty, especially smokers, because they would feel guilty that they were affecting the other people negatively. This campaign also relied on the Rossiter-Percy model because it played with a negative emotion to get the solution. In this case, the negative emotion was ‘guilt’, but not ‘fear’.

It can be argued that guilt is stronger than fear, especially when comparing the results of the campaign that used guilt and the initiative that used fear in its messages. One reason that could be attributed to the difference is that no one could prove guilt, but people could prove fear.

In other words, someone could show that the thing one feared the most was not as bad as they thought. For instance, there are people who came out claiming that they had been smoking for years, yet they did not acquire any health complications related to smoking.

In the case of the feeling of guilt, one could prove it because it was a common experience among many people. For instance, most people would feel guilty making a baby sick due to their smoking habits. This was the reason many smokers would step outside to smoke when they saw kids around them.

Intervention of governments

Numerous governments have helped in the fight against cigarette smoking. One way they have done this is through ensuring there are health facilities to help people trying to quit the habit. There are rehabs for cigarette smokers, just like rehabs are used to help drug addicts stop taking drugs.

Carroll and Buchholtz (2012) assert that quitting smoking is not easy. The withdrawal symptoms are similar to those of all other drug addictions. The case is severer if the person was a smoking addict. Indeed, there are private clinics that have been set to help people get through their smoking addiction.

However, such clinics can be very expensive. Consequently, numerous governments have set up public facilities that can be used by people who cannot afford the fees in the private facilities.

In addition, various governments have set aside ‘smoking zones’ to restrict the smokers (Brink 2011). Rules have been drafted on the implications of smoking anywhere else. In different countries, governments have also allowed organisations to put up signs of whether people can smoke or not.

Schools, hospitals, and private companies have been encouraged to put up smoking zones within their premises or ‘no smoking’ signs. These not only help protect the people who breathe secondary smoke, but they also limit the number of times a smoker takes a cigarette.

For example, if the person was used to smoking every two hours, then they can reduce the number of cigarettes they take if they spend six hours in a no smoking zone. They can keep reducing the number of sticks they smoke in a day and hopefully quit in the process.

For some, they join a facility to help them stop completely immediately they realize that they are reducing the frequency of smoking.

Conclusion

In conclusion, communication is crucial in anti-smoking initiatives. There have been numerous drives aimed at helping people quit smoking and encouraging other people not to start smoking.

One such campaign is the use of well-known people to show that smoking is harmful. Another example is the use of messages that scare people from smoking. Such initiatives use the fear appeal to frame their messages. The guilt tripping campaign uses the Rossiter-Percy model to motivate people to quit.

The model uses negative motivations to frame messages. Thus, the campaign messages are drafted based on the guilty feeling the smokers get when they realize that they are hurting other people. Governments have been very helpful in the fight against smoking.

Most governments have set up public rehab centres for addicts and people trying to quit smoking. Moreover, many governments have set up ‘smoking zones’ that restrict the smokers.

Reference List

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