Anti-smoking ads have gained more momentum in recent years in light of tobacco settlement requirements to inform the public of potential health risks from cigarette smoking.
But student opinions of ads, such as those from the Truth campaign, are mixed between annoyance, indifference and support.
Mike Katsorchis, a geology senior, and Jessica Marks, a mass communication freshman, are smokers who think the Truth ads do nothing to deter them from the habit.
“They annoy me because, by this time, everybody knows the risks and how deadly they are,” Katsorchis said. “I don’t need those punks with their commercials trying to tell me that.”
Marks said she does not get annoyed and she just discards the messages from the ads.
“Who doesn’t already know what smoking does?” Marks asked. “I think I’ll quit eventually, but I don’t think an ad is going to change my mind.”
Nga Nguyen, a non-smoking biological sciences freshman, said the ads do not affect her at all, and she thinks people are going to do what they want.
Katsorchis said he finds some of the ads hard to believe, like one claiming a shipment of cyanide-laden grapes were not allowed off of a ship, while cigarettes containing cyanide are sold everyday.
Maryland attorney Lauren Colby thinks the ads and other research showing negative effects of smoking are bogus. He is so convinced that he published a book, “The Defense of Smokers,” about anti-smoking campaigns and studies being mere propaganda.
“People say there are 400,000 premature deaths from smoking each year, and that’s all made up out of thin air,” Colby said. “When someone dies of cancer, they assume 38 percent were caused by smoking.”
He said people get away with publishing “false” information because smoking is based on faith that the studies are true, and some researchers are put under political pressure.
According to Colby, there is no scientific evidence that shows smoking causes premature death, and the anti-smoking movement is a modern version of prohibition.
“We go through periods of prudishness,” he said. “At one time they were teaching that masturbation would cause blindness, and doctors believed it. In the ’20s there was prohibition, and now it’s smoking.”
Colby, a smoker for about 60 years, said it is only a matter of time before smoking becomes illegal in some states. He thinks the younger generation will contest the laws when they get older and when they find out smoking is not as harmful as they had been told.
“They’ve done some animal studies where they’ve raised rats in cabinets filled with cigarette smoke, and they’re just as healthy as animals raised in fresh air,” Colby said.
He said even advertisements showing differences in smokers’ and non-smokers’ lungs are false.
“I noted a pathologist as saying he can’t tell, when he does autopsies, if someone’s been a smoker or not,” Colby said. “If you look at the fine print [in those pictures], the ‘smoker’s’ lung was someone who had lung cancer and people just assume that person was a smoker. The reason it’s black is because it’s full of tumors.”
He said there are benefits from smoking that are overlooked, such as preventing the onset of Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s. It can even help with asthma attacks, he said.
Phil Graham, director of marketing for the American Legacy Foundation, the agency that runs the Truth campaign, said they get their information from many different resources, such as the Centers for Disease Control and the Offices of the US Surgeon General.
He thinks all the information they release is factual.
“All the information that we put out is rigorously checked,” Graham said. “When you call yourself Truth, you hold yourself to a very high standard.”
He said after tobacco industries were sued, part of their settlement was to let the public know their products are addictive. It would be hard for anyone to argue against the makers of the product.
Graham said he would not compare anti-smoking ads to prohibition because alcohol and cigarettes are two different things.
“Medical science has shown a couple of drinks are actually good thing,” he said. “But there is no such thing as a good cigarette. There are absolutely no redeeming health effects of smoking, or at least I haven’t heard of them.”
He said the basis for Truth ads is to prevent people from taking up the habit of smoking, rather than getting people to quit.
“When people have already been smoking, you have to appeal to them in a different way and give them different motivations because it’s really hard to quit,” Graham said. “These ads were initially created to get people not to smoke.”