WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and
Drug Administration is using ads that depict yellow teeth and wrinkled
skin to show the nation's at-risk youth the costs associated with
cigarette smoking.
The federal
agency said Tuesday it is launching a $115 million multimedia education
campaign called "The Real Cost" that's aimed at stopping teenagers from
smoking and encouraging them to quit.
Advertisements
will run in more than 200 markets throughout the U.S. for at least one
year beginning Feb. 11. The campaign will include ads on TV stations
such as MTV and print spots in magazines like Teen Vogue. It also will
use social media.
"Our kids are
the replacement customers for the addicted adult smokers who die or
quit each day," said Mitch Zeller, the director of the FDA's Center for
Tobacco Products. "And that's why we think it's so important to reach
out to them — not to lecture them, not to throw statistics at them — but
to reach them in a way that will get them to rethink their relationship
with tobacco use."
Zeller, who
oversaw the anti-tobacco "Truth" campaign while working at the
nonprofit American Legacy Foundation time in the early 2000s, called the
new campaign a "compelling, provocative and somewhat graphic way" of
grabbing the attention of more than 10 million young people ages 12 to
17 that are open to, or are already experimenting with, cigarettes.
According
to the FDA, nearly 90 percent of adult smokers started using cigarettes
by age 18 and more than 700 kids under 18 become daily smokers each
day. The agency aims to reduce the number of youth cigarette smokers by
at least 300,000 within three years.
"While most teens understand
the serious health risks associated with tobacco use, they often don't
believe the long-term consequences will ever apply to them," said FDA
Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. "We'll highlight some of the real costs
and health consequences associated with tobacco use by focusing on some
of the things that really matter to teens — their outward appearance and
having control and independence over their lives."
Two
of the TV ads show teens walking into a corner store to buy cigarettes.
When the cashier tells them it's going to cost them more than they
have, the teens proceed to tear off a piece of their skin and use pliers
to pull out a tooth in order to pay for their cigarettes. Other ads
portray cigarettes as a man dressed in a dirty white shirt and khaki
pants bullying teens and another shows teeth being destroyed by a ray
gun shooting cigarettes.
The FDA is evaluating the impact of the campaign by following 8,000 people between the ages of 11 and 16 for
No comments:
Post a Comment