FDA Anti-Smoking Ads Aimed at Teens: 'The Real Cost' Shows Youth Pulling Out Teeth and Skin (VIDEOS)
FDA anti-smoking ads have been released Tuesday that are aiming to stop at-risk youth from picking up cigarettes or convince them to quit smoking before they become addicted. The large campaign addresses the millions of teens who are just beginning to experiment with cigarettes or are open to the idea.
The FDA anti-smoking ads appear in both print and video form under the title "The Real Cost." The $115 million multimedia campaign is designed to educate teens about what smoking can do to their bodies: wrinkled skin and yellowed or missing teeth are depicted on youth, which is particularly jarring.
"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," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told the Associated Press. "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."
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The ads also depict another message teens can relate to— bullying. "Cigarettes are bullies" is the tagline for one of the short commercials, with another showing a tiny man representing cigarettes forcing a teens to hand over their money, stop what they're doing and go outside immediately.
The ads will run from Feb. 11 for at least a year and they will appear in multimedia that is popular to youth, like Teen Vogue and MTV, according to AP. The aim is to stop the number of dying smokers being replaced with younger consumers and cut youth smokers by 300,000 in three years.
"Our kids are the replacement customers for the addicted adult smokers who die or quit each day," Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, explained. "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."
The campaign is a result of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, which forces tobacco companies to pay for the advertising via various fees levied against them. Still, the FDA's efforts are small compared to tobacco marketing, which exceeds $8 billion a year.
