Tobacco Free Weld County

A recent study conducted by the University of California San Francisco has found that young adults (aged 18-25) with an unfavorable view of the tobacco industry were statistically much less likely to smoke or use tobacco or were much more likely to want to quit and make more quit attempts if they were current users. 

This information is valuable for health educators and social marketers alike whose goal is to educate about the risks of tobacco and encourage avoiding tobacco. Often times health education campaigns focus on the health risks to the user rather than on the deceitful tactics of the tobacco industry or what the study calls “tobacco indsutry denormalization”.

“Running anti-tobacco ads to expose the fact that the tobacco industry kills five million people worldwide annually turns out to be hugely successful in preventing (tobacco use) and promoting cessation,” said Stanton Glantz, PhD, a study co-author and professor of medicine and director of UCSF’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

A social marketing campaign against tobacco and the industry that has been shown to be effective in both the young adult (18-25) and youth (12-18) demographics has been the Truth Campaign that is sponsored by the American Legacy Foundation.

“The results show a huge effect of attitudes linked to advertising campaigns that focus on portraying the tobacco industry in a negative light. The tobacco industry cares a lot about public opinion and hates those ads, because the ads make the industry look bad,” said Pamela Ling, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and assistant professor of general internal medicine at UCSF.

To determine attitudes, the researchers asked respondents how strongly they agreed or disagreed with three statements: Taking a stand against smoking is important to me; I want to be involved with efforts to get rid of cigarette smoking; and I would like to see cigarette companies go out of business. They found that these views could be influenced with the anti-industry ads.

The researchers found that those who agreed with those statements and supported action against the tobacco industry were one-third as likely to be smokers as those who did not support action against the tobacco industry. Among current smokers, those who had a negative attitude towards the tobacco industry were over four times more likely to plan to quit smoking than smokers who did not support action against the tobacco industry.

Here is a recent ad from the Truth campaign:

For more information on the study and on tobacco industry denormalization, visit:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/149242.php