Tuesday
Jan062009
Why health warnings don't work
Tuesday, January 6, 2009 Interesting article in the New York Times suggesting that the incoming Obama administration should abandon tobacco health warnings - because they don't work.
According to Martin Lindstrom, author of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, warning labels backfire because they stimulate the nucleus accumbens, sometimes called the “craving spot”.
"Barack Obama has said he’s been using nicotine gum to fight his own cigarette habit. His new administration can help other smokers quit, too, by eliminating the government scare tactics that only increase people’s craving."
Full article HERE.
Reader Comments (7)
So far, since Ireland started the smoking ban fiasco here, none of these bans in Ireland, Scotland, Wales or England have reduced smoking which had been in decline prior to the bans. At the very least the number of smokers has remained the same, but in the main, the number of smokers has increased and the increase is, apparently, in the very age group the government particularly want to deter!
Guess this says it all then, really and backs up the fact that warnings on cig packets do not stop people from smoking - lets face it, smoker or not, we all know what has been said about smoking and all the various diseases, etc, it is supposed to cause - how many of us actually believe this though? I mean believe it in that it is the gospel truth and if you smoke you will 100% for sure get one or more ofthese diseases?
I think most people are adult enough and intelligent enough to realise that smoking MAY be a contributory factor in some of these diseases, but it is no way the sole cause and that many other every day things, like car fumes, air freshener sprays and others are just as likely to contribute as much, if not more, than smoking does.
Candidly the more ASH and their chums plus the puppets in government carry on exagerating the risks, the more people will stop listening and not just about this issue either!
The boy who cried 'Wolf' springs to mind.
Yes Lyn, reminds me of the very first health warning on cigarette packets (only cigarettes as well), was it 1974? I seem to remember it said 'smoking may damage your health'.
It may have been around 1974 Timbone. I started smoking around 1970/71 (when I was 13) and can't say I remember seeing the warnings, but then again, do smokers really see them now?
If I remember rightly I used to smoke Sovereign and they were about 20 pence for 20 and then went up to around 25 pence. A long time ago, that!!
My mother had already given up - she used to smoke Sterling Silver and decided to stop when they went up to 2/6 a packet! Dad always smoked roll ups - Old Holborn and would roll his supply plus a few more each evening, which meant, if I was stuck, I used to pinch a couple - I'm sure he must have known, but he never said anything.
I am smoking Rothmans that I brought back from my recent trip to Angola.
It says on the side "Smoking is a health risk".
Which is all I need it to say. I don't need horror porn, I don't need made up illnesses, I don't need to know that smoking will affect my unborn baby, I don't need pictures of some child with poor dental hygiene, or some inbred mountain man with a liver growing out of his neck.
"Smoking is a health risk" (and I have serious doubts about that) is enough.
I have educated myself on the "risks", and I find them acceptable.
Now leave me be.
Go and get your perverse kicks from somewhere else.
The warnings do not, nor never have, worked.
A small correction to my earlier post. The first warnings said 'cigarettes may damage your health'. Warnings did not appear on pipe tobacco, cigars or hand rolling tobacco! Although cigarette advertising was stopped on television, pipe tobacco and cigars were still advertised.
Don't times change.
I know what you mean Colin and lets face it, just about everything we do in our day to day lives carries a risk!
Perhaps stairs should be banned as people can fall and break bones, or worst case, break their neck! Perhaps all forms of internal combustion engines should be banned as the toxins these produce are far, far greater than any group of smokers can generate.
I could go on, but I think the people here are intelligent enough to work the rest out for themselves! It would be worth my while going on if I though anyone in government might read this, however, as they so obviously do not have the brains they were born with!
Thats a laugh about govt health warnings on packs encouraging smokers, we could have told them that years ago.
One gets the feeling its all about to implode and the last lot of spin doctors were sacked due to the downturn and the chief exec's in Ash and big pharma are getting nervous about costs and looking for cheaper spin doctors from eastern europe.
So as well as saving the world and giving us all new hope Obama is going to solve the smoking problem with sugarfree gum.
I just cant wait for his presidency!