Scare tactics cut smoking rates in Australia to all time low

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Scare tactics cut smoking rates in Australia to all time low
by BMJ --  Chapman 318 (7197): 1508b
AUSTRALIA;
Date: Friday, 6/4/99

Simon Chapman , Sydney

Australia's smoking rate, which was stalled throughout the 1990s
with around 25%of adults found in several surveys to be smoking, has
recommenced its downward slide. The national prevalence of adult
smoking has now fallen to 22%the lowest figure ever recorded.

Australia, like the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States
had experienced a decade long lull in its decline in the prevalence of smoking.

On World No Tobacco Day this week, health minister Michael Wooldridge
announced the results of the evaluation of the controversial "Every
cigarette is doing you damage" national media campaign which ran from
June to November 1997, and which cost $A7m (£2.9m; $4.6m).

The campaign has run sporadically since 1997. The television
advertisements took viewers inside the bodies of smokers in their 30s
to see the damage caused by smoking.

The advertisement found to be most motivating to smokers showed a
surgeon's gloved hand squeezing a yellow atheroma out of an aorta at
necropsy. Described by smokers as something you "see once and never
forget," the advertisements have renewed debate about the
conventional wisdom that scare tactics "don't work" in health promotion.

Scare campaigns have also been used to spearhead the public awareness
component of Australia's road safety campaign, which has similarly
seen the toll of road deaths reach its lowest point.

All of the antismoking television advertisements gave viewers a
telephone number on quitting smoking; the evaluation of the campaign
reports that 1 in 4 callers continued to abstain from smoking one year later.

Although the campaign was targeted at adult smokers, evidence emerged
that it had also had a powerful effect on teenagers. The campaign is
now being run in Massachusetts, United States; Singapore; New Zealand;
and British Columbia.

In September last year, deregulation of nicotine replacement treatment
saw two pharmaceutical companies, Pharmacia Upjohn and SmithKline
Beecham, together spend more than the government on advertising
directly to consumers. Sales of nicotine replacement therapy aids rose
spectacularly as a result.

Further information can be found at www.quitnow.info.au.