Call for smoking scare ads

FEAR, disgust, sadness and hope. These are the emotional triggers that will be used in a series of hard hitting television ads to encourage Australia’s 3 million smokers to stop.

But they won’t be seen around the nation – except in this paper, today – unless the government stumps up $50 million a year in funding.

An ad that shows a man rolling a cigarette from sticky body parts with the message “every cigarette rots you from the inside out”, another showing a man smoking a cigarette that grows into a cancerous tumour every puff he takes could be purchased from the UK.

Another video of a man who needs help walking after being disabled by a stroke thanks to tobacco has been shown only in Victoria but could be aired around the country for the first time. Antismoking campaigners are also eyeing up a US ad initiative.

New funding would also allow a battery of older hardhitting horror ads that have been shown in some states to be rolled out nationwide. A man in a coffin, a woman with a tracheotomy and another with a stoma bag as a result of diseases caused by smoking feature in these ads.

“Fear is the primal emotion and the most important in getting people to contemplate giving up smoking,” says Sarah Durkin a researcher from the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer.