What does this image have to do with smoking?
Thursday, February 19, 2009 
A "hard-hitting" new Smokefree campaign - 'Worried' - launches today. A news release from the Department of Health says:
"The ads, aimed at parents who smoke, communicate an uncomfortable message to viewers - that teenage children worry about their parents' future due to the harmful health effects of smoking. The campaign is supported by new findings which reveal that nearly half (46 per cent) of teenagers are more worried about their parents smoking than anything else, including money, bullying and divorce."
Of course they're worried. Anti-smoking campaigners are forever trying to frighten us all to death. Impressionable children are an easy target. But don't tell me that a child who is being seriously bullied, or whose parents are in the middle of a difficult divorce, are more concerned about their parents smoking - because I don't believe it.
Health minister Ben Bradshaw says:
"I hope that these adverts will persuade parents to stop smoking. Smoking results in over 2,000 deaths each week and is the biggest public health challenge this country faces. These new findings should also make parents think twice about the emotional distress their smoking has on their children.
"In addition to feeling a burden of responsibility about their families' health, parents smoking leads to feelings of frustration and anger, with a third (31 per cent) of teenagers feeling most upset with their parents when they smoke and three quarters (75 per cent) of teenagers ask their parents to stop. But 43 per cent of them feel angry that their parents don't listen to them, a third feel confused (32 per cent) about why they smoke and just under a third (29 per cent) feel frustrated that their parents don't know how bad it is for them."
Frustration and anger? They're teenagers, for Christ's sake! If it wasn't their parents' smoking, it would be something else. (And it probably is.) As for "feeling a burden of responsibility about their families' health", what planet does Bradshaw live on? Most of them are far too busy texting their friends - while glued to Facebook and Bebo - to even notice.
Bizarrely, the new campaign features a series of posters and images that includes the one above. Doesn't it strike you as a bit odd that they have chosen to feature a half naked boy in a shower ... Worried? Confused? Call the Department of Health (020 7210 4850) ... or the Advertising Standards Authority (020 7242 8159).
PS. I haven't seen the actual posters but you can see a set of six still images HERE.
Reader Comments (15)
...and maybe the parents are too worried about whether they're going to lose their jobs or their homes next week to think about quitting smoking. Doesn't this Government have a recession to sort out?
BTW is the stat 2,000 deaths a week an increase - I'm sure that last week it was 87,000 per annum or perhaps I'm getting mixed up with the thousands killed by passive smoking....
This is obviously the first step in a wider campaign aimed at equating smoking with child abuse. I always said it would happen. Mark my words - smoking parents of the future will have their children taken away from them and they will be prosecuted and shunned as much as if they had been responsible for the murder of Baby P.
All children grow up to the knowledge and understanding that one day they are going to lose their parents. The light begins to dawn during the teenage years as they begin to understand the nature of their own humanity and start to come to terms with the humanity of their parents. For thundering sakes what is this about? Convincing kids that if their parents don't smoke they will be immortal? How about injecting some sense of reality back into life. People grow old, get sick and die. None of these is a crime, all of them are parts of normal life. Suddenly there is only one cause of all human ills, the cigarette?
Oh and the next smug, moronic, brainwashed drone that suggests that alzheimers and dementia are life-style diseases can look forward to me tossing a molotov cocktail through their letterbox.
Burn the doctors too. Much of this is rooted in the fact that the medical profession has achieved nothing of note for over 75 years. All improvements have been down to improved care not wonder drugs or breakthroughs. Since they cannot deliver they have apparently decided that playing "blame the patient" is the only game in town. Does anyone but me think "your life-style isn't healthy enough" sounds like a latter day version of "you didn't pray hard enough"
Rant Over.
Pat, don't you think that government, by condoning these types of advert are, in fact, more guilty of child abuse than parents who smoke?
Some parents who smoke do so to cope through stressful times, and for a lot, that is most of the time. Take away their cigarette and actual child abuse may start, which will shock and horrify the parent as much as anyone else!
One more thing, although I have said it before, my daughter, now 25, has yet another cold! She works as an assistant manager in a Foody Pub, however, since she left the smokey atmosphere of home she has had more colds than she ever had when she lived at home. Since the smoking ban, she seems to have one cold after another, with, if she is lucky, about a week between!
Now, she eats healthily, healither in fact that she did when at home, if all the hype is to be believed - she used fresh ingredients, eats fresh fruit and veg and uses all apparent low fat and healthy methods of cooking.
I wonder if it is the lack of SHS that is causing her to constantly be ill or whether it is too much healthy living?
The utter bastards.
They have provided the cause and are now measuring the effects of their own misinformation.
Kids are given the ASH script on harm at school; at an age where their critical-faculties have yet to develop.
The utter utter shits are using the kids to try and control the parents again and the message is getting really nasty.
I can just picture health minister Bradshaw's drone signing off on that gobbledegook spiel about parents smoking.
I'd say he hasnt a clue what its all about, that is until someone like Forest disputes that written drivel.
Then the media drone types up a shorter load of codswallop with less percentages for him to memorize to spew forth to us with more undeciferable weasel words.
In Essex, children in at least two nursery schools have been taught the dangers of smoking. No wonder our kids are getting worried. Hitler also used children to promote their propaganda.
Can we please use 'child abuse' with care?
Lyn, if parents are in danger of becoming 'child abusers' because they're deprived of a cigarette then either they are so addicted that they are guilty of a heinous crime or the crime of child abuse becomes trivialised. Are you really saying that, deprived of cigarettes, parents will inflict such damage that their children are scarred???
Pat - well, they've already started, haven't they in denying smokers the right to foster/adopt?
I think that we're well past the stage of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.
The statistics which this moron Bradshaw reeled off sounds like something from a good comedy script. Oh what a tangled web we weave....
Now they follow the policy of 'Hitler's children'.
Have they no shame?
Obviously not. But I have, and it has made me even more determined to fight this regime that we are living under.
Whose survey is Benny Bradshit quoting these figures from, anyway? The quote reads as a list of answers to some very leading questions, so I'd put money on it having been commissioned and designed by one of the antismoking fake-charities in nulabor's quango club love-in.
Great to see our tax-booty managed with such prudence, as always. Nulabor's road to bankruptcy is paved with venal intent.
Joyce, I do fear that actual child abuse could arise if some parents are faced with constant nagging by their brainwashed offspring and, as a result, to attempt to give up their cigarettes. Not because they are actually abusers or dreadful people, but because of stress which is rife in society today and which the smoking ban has, in my opinion and experience, added to along with the current economic climate and job losses. Stress can and does cause people to 'snap', 'lose control' often just momentarily, but still long enough to hit out in that moment of madness.
In today's society, that moment of madness is enough to cause the SS (Social Services) to step in and cause them further stress by putting their children on the At Risk Register, or worse. We have all seen how defenceless little children are left to be brutally tortured and abused while a one off incident can result in the removal of children from their natural parents.
Life, emotions and reactions are very complicated these days in this culture of blame and I, in no way, wish to scaremonger with regard to a possible rise in child abuse or trivialise child abuse, just point out that for some people, stresses in their life are so great that without the calming effect of a cigarette, and particularly being nagged by their own children, many of whom are too young to even understand the propoganda that is being fed to them, the stress can cause unwanted and unintended reactions.
Utter bastards Basil? Now Now ! I have no words to describe these scum.
People losing jobs,homes,corrupted banks and God knows what else, and all they are on about is smoking a bloody plant. For Lord Almightys sake just shoot the F lot of them.
Another rant over.God! calm down Pete lad.
I am sure this poster will be doing the rounds in Her Majesty's Prison's, especially in the Section 43 area. At least you can have a smoke there.
I'm sorry, but this image sickens me. It's looks to me like a young lad has just finished training of some sort. What on earth has that got to do with their parent's smoking