NYC-Feature Story

The ‘truth’ Is Hard to Ignore
Teens like these anti-tobacco ads

By Staff writers, New Youth Connections

Picture 1,200 people: 1,200 people with 1,200 young faces walking down the street. Some look like you. They might have your brown eyes or your black hair. Others may have the same chin or skin tone as some of your friends.

Now count to five and picture them all dropping dead on a street corner near cars like the ones your parents may drive and a streetlight that’s still flashing red. That’s 1,200 people dropping dead in one day.

Then you see a young man holding up a sign that says, “Tobacco kills 1,200 people a day.” The other side of the sign says, “Ever think about taking a day off?”

This simple yet powerful TV advertisement is part of “truth,” a national, youth-focused anti-tobacco education campaign. Truth’s goal is to reduce the numbers of youths smoking by exposing the tobacco industry’s marketing and manufacturing practices and highlighting the toll of tobacco in innovative ways. The campaign uses advertising on teen TV networks, the Internet, online social networks, appearances at concerts and other methods to spread the message.

Hard to Ignore or Forget

Six New Youth Connections reporters (all of whom had seen the truth ads on TV before) watched several truth ads recently, and we all agreed that the advertisements were effective. (None of us smoke.)

NYC reporter April Daley says there have been “smoking is bad for you” pamphlets and sections in health textbooks around for years. Most of them are ignored and forgotten minutes after they are read.

The “truth” campaign is hard to forget and even harder to just ignore because the ads aren’t lectures, says April.

“They don’t tell teens to stop smoking. They just give the facts and trust teens to take away their own message. They use dramatic images to demonstrate those facts so you feel compelled to watch. The ads aren’t patronizing or demeaning. They’re just ‘truth.’”

It’s easy to visualize the harm of smoking when you see 1,200 body bags thrown one on top of one another, stacked high on a sidewalk as they become a modest mountain of dead bodies wrapped in white coverings.

1,200 Body Bags

“Pretty grotesque image, right? It’s very powerful to see 1,200 body bags stacked on top of each other as a result of tobacco use,” says another NYC reporter, who chose the “truth” body bag ad as her favorite.

Why should you believe our opinions about their ads? Don’t just take our word for it—the research backs us up. One study found there were approximately 300,000 fewer youth smokers as a result of “truth” during the first years of the campaign (2000-2002), according to research published in the American Journal of Public Health.

And a 2002 U.S. government survey, conducted two years after the start of the truth campaign, found that high school smoking had dropped 18% since a survey taken two years earlier.

“It’s amazing how such a small organization makes an enormous difference,” said NYC reporter Nathanial Mack. “I’d never imagine we could have 300,000 fewer youth smokers as a result of the truth campaign.”

Tobacco-Funded ‘truth’

The “truth” campaign is funded by the American Legacy Foundation, which was created after many states sued the tobacco companies because the states were paying high health care costs for smokers. The tobacco companies settled the lawsuit in 1998. In March 1999, the companies agreed to give the new foundation more than $250 million each year through 2003. Through 2007, the foundation has received a total of $1.67 billion for its public education efforts, according to the foundation.

Although that sounds like a lot of money, the foundation still can’t afford to spend as much as the tobacco companies on advertising, according to Patricia McLaughlin, the foundation’s spokeswoman. “Spending on ‘truth’ is now about $30 million per year, which sounds like a lot of money, but tobacco companies spend $36 million a day on marketing efforts in the U.S. alone,” she says.

Getting Addicted Fast

We started wondering why teens smoke, if it’s so bad for us. According to the truth campaign, smoking gives some teens a way to express themselves or rebel. Our teenage years are a time of transition into adulthood and we’re trying to take control of our own lives.

We also know that teens don’t like to follow what adults tell us to do, says Yaki, another NYC reporter. If adults tell some teens not to smoke, they might think, “Why can you smoke and I can’t?” Or they might think, “I’m not going to listen to you.”

In Yaki’s experience, some teens start smoking because their friends smoke. During our teenage years, most teens want to fit in. And once they have the first experience of smoking, they have the second and third and…they’re addicted.

Eighty percent of smokers start smoking before age 18, says McLaughlin.

“We want to reach teens in the 12-to-17 year age range because these are the years when they’re thinking of taking up the habit,” she says. “We also go for the most edgy kids, the kids who are most open to smoking. Our goal is to get them out of their teen years without smoking, in the hopes they will never take up smoking after that.”

NYC reporter Cassius Naylor believes the truth campaign will continue to reduce the number of teen smokers.
“Their ads show what can happen to you if you follow through with smoking,” he says. “I think the campaign has a good chance to remain successful, because despite the ads being brief, they’re dramatic and simple—which helps you want to watch the ads and not to forget them.”

More Truth Online

For more information on the truth campaign, go online to thetruth.com.

For more information on quitting smoking, contact the New York State Smokers’ toll-free Quitline (866-697-8487), the National Cancer Institute’s Web-based program to quit smoking (www.smokefree.gov) or the American Cancer Society (www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/ped_10.asp).

Some Hard Facts About Smoking

Each day, more than 4,000 teens try their first cigarette and another 2,000 become regular, daily smokers. Of those, about half will eventually die from a smoking-related disease.

The younger you are when you start smoking, the more likely you are to smoke as an adult. Almost 90% of adult smokers became addicted to tobacco before age 19.

Just three out of 100 high school smokers think they will be smoking five years from now, but studies show that 60 out of 100 will be smoking seven to nine years later.

Nationwide, about 28% of high school students say they’ve used some form of tobacco.

Source: American Cancer Society and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention