Smokeout at 25

The American Cancer Society has tried all sorts of eye-catching gimmicks in its Great American Smokeout campaign. In ’93, the society offered beefcake model Fabio and this breath-taking statistic: Up to age 64, smokers make up about 27 percent of the population. After 75 years of age, smokers comprise about 8 percent. (Guess where they all went?) The year before, it borrowed Garry Trudeau’s comic-strip character Mr. Butts in a sarcastic industry come-on: “What is it about a smoker? A flash of brown teeth? The distinctive patina on the index finger? The unforgettable scent that arrives just moments before you do?”

The Smokeout marks 25 years today, and can claim some success in making Americans more aware of the health effects of smoking. Even the tobacco companies have stopped pretending that smoking is a benign activity and that smokers’ “rights” must be defended. Still, 47 million U.S. adults smoke, though 46.9 million must be aware of the horrible things they are doing to their bodies – and to the bodies of those nearby.

An early and particularly effective Smokeout campaign had the picture of a once-attractive model covered with oozing, blistering gobs of tar to represent the effects of the smoldering cigarette between her fingers. The text beneath this vision of ugliness asked, “If what happened on your inside happened on your outside, would you still smoke?” The ad emphasized the difference between what cigarette manufacturers portrayed in their ads and the real effect of smoking, and raises questions about the use of vanity and social unease, especially among young customers, to sell this deadly product.

Like the first Smokeout campaign in California in 1976, the American Cancer Society asks smokers this year to quit for a day. If the previous Smokeouts are a guide, millions will, and a few will make it more than a day, a very few more than a week. Not that smokers need the reminder as an incentive, but government figures show 400,000 Americans die each year from diseases caused by smoking; 50,000 non-smokers die each year from second-hand smoke; and smokers are much more likely than non-smokers to spend their final years in poor health, suffering from depression, emphysema, heart diseases, chronic bronchitis, cancers of the lung, larynx, mouth, throat, bladder and pancreas.

With the tobacco settlement a few years ago, there is more help now for smokers who would like to quit than ever before. Local physicians, the state Bureau of Health, dozens of local health agencies or the American Cancer Society (1-800-227-2345) can help. The Smokeout is as good a day as any to begin, to make that first day cigarette-free. And then maybe a second day.