Chicagoland Sportbike Forums banner

Anti-Smoking Ads Disturbs kids...and it's a bad thing?!?

686 views 30 replies 15 participants last post by  BIGGY 
#1 ·
Anybody else think that disturbing ads are good for kids to see?!? I just quit smoking and know how hard it is.

Singapore Anti-Smoking Ads Disturb Kids

Mar 29, 2:36 AM (ET)

SINGAPORE (AP) - Singapore's graphic anti-smoking TV ads are working - but now will be aired only at night following complaints that they're too disturbing for children, officials said Thursday.

In one of the government Health Promotion Board's ads, a sunken-eyed woman with cracked lips and brownish, deformed teeth appears under the headline: "Quitting is hard. Not quitting, is harder."

The board said the three-month campaign that began March 20 will continue, but the ads now will only be shown after 8 p.m local time and will be preceded by a message warning viewers of the graphic content.

"The Health Promotion Board has received feedback that our advertisement may be too disturbing to some children," the board's chief executive, Lam Pin Woon, wrote in an open letter published Thursday in The Straits Times newspaper.

"Since the launch of our campaign, we have seen a fivefold increase in the number of calls to (the government's) QuitLine from smokers desiring to quit smoking," Lam wrote. "We encourage parents to take this opportunity to educate their children on the fatal consequences of smoking."

As part of the campaign, the board also has posted two actors - posing as a doctor and a woman hacking and coughing on her deathbed - in its bustling downtown business district at lunchtime.

Like Hong Kong, tightly controlled Singapore has banned smoking in most public places.

The city-state is well known for government-led public behavior modification campaigns that have included pushes for courteous driving, showing up on time for weddings, keeping public toilets clean and speaking proper English.
 
See less See more
#10 ·
I've mentioned this for some, but it was a little shocking when I first saw it...

A couple years ago I worked for a tobacco company Republic Tobacco (makers of Top Tobacco that some here might recognize). They also owned the Chicago Wolves so free tickets to all games! :)

Anyway, you could smoke anywhere and everywhere in the building except our server room. Bathrooms, cubicles, lunch room, conference rooms all had ash trays. It wasn't until I saw the fast forwarded effects of smoking that it really sunk in for me. I don't smoke cigarettes anyway, but was just a very good reminder. On average many of the people were pack a day. There was about 5 or so that I recall who were 4 pack a day smokers (one lady even had a small collection of inhalers on her desk!) You look at people who had worked there for 5 years and looked nothing like the photos on their desks from just a few years before. In our 2 floor building all of the tobacco offices were on the 2nd floor and most people would take the stairs. Sometimes I think watching paint dry would be faster than following them up. For a while it was sad to see the heaving most people were doing as they got half way up.

What most sticks out to me is once I was going through all of the customer complaint letters. Usually the complaints were that they got a bad package or poorly filled...something brand related. But there were a few that I'm not sure if people wrote out of sadness or anger about their loved ones dying. And the first few letters that I read (before they were handed to the legal team) initially didn't thrill me. To top it off, a few folks there would get a kick or simply laugh at the letters. "Oooh, someone smoked and died...story of the year." Then again I realized that people smoking (fortunate for them or not) is what paid for my house, car, bikes...so who the hell was I to complain? In any case I guess there will be evil in any company you work for, I just had to realize that people made a choice and so be it. I guess sad things happen every day and I have better things to worry about than someone getting sick from smoking when they chose it. Kind of a harsh view I guess.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Slowass
#4 ·
I don't smoke and never did, but those stupid Truth ads are so dumb they might make me start smoking if I was a kid.

I think a lot of the ads on tv have the opposite effect of what they're going for.
 
#17 ·
To paraphrase Redd Foxx,

If I'm in too good of shape I'll be really mad when I'm lying in my death bed dying from nothing.
 
#20 ·
Okay well when I die, I'd rather go out with a bang than not being able to talk, hard to breathe and lung cancer.

I'd rather die from jumping out of a plane and the parachute not opening up or something similar. And when it happens. I want you all to play Today by Smashing Pumpkins at my funeral.
 
#24 ·
Those are amazing Vcook. I know some people in their 60s who's doctors advised that they start smoking (once the Valium stopped working) to relax.

:eek:t
One of my favorite things in the world is ads from the early part of the 10th century. In college, for fun (yeah, I know...I shoulda drank/partied) I'd go through the University microfishe collection of newspaper ads from the 1910-1950s to find stuff like that. I had a collection of prohibition-era ads where I swear they were clandestinely advertising booze (perfume bottles, "elixir", etc).
 
#27 ·
Those are amazing Vcook. I know some people in their 60s who's doctors advised that they start smoking (once the Valium stopped working) to relax.

:eek:t
One of my favorite things in the world is ads from the early part of the 10th century.
Post up some of them adds from the 10th century please.:laughing:
 
#29 ·
Unless you drop that cig in the couch while napping.:laughing:
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top