Children and Smoking

Yes, that’s Easy for You to Say
Every single day you walk, drive, ride your bike, or just sit in the park, there is someone smoking a cigarette. Someone that is lowering their chances to live, taking a risk of cancer, and sometimes even lessening the time spent with their children, because smoking does kill. Nobody wants to get that news saying “you have throat cancer” or even worse “you have lung cancer”, regardless it will kill you in the end. So why are people so worried about telling other people not to try it and hiding it from their kids, when they should be ones fixing themselves? Smoking is one of the few things that will allow you to worry about yourself to fix it, because it is your body, your safety and your life you’re trying to fix. In the advertisement I found I was completely bewildered by the things people were saying to those kids. If adults were already so educated on the subject of these deadly things then they should be fixing their own problem. During the advertisement they were saying things like “If you smoke you get cancer and other bad diseases” and “If you smoke you won’t live to play longer with your friends”. This advertisement is showing that adults themselves are scaring kids into not smoking, but they’re not scared to smoke in front of them. This advertisement is basically an experiment composed with children. These children are going up to smokers with cigarettes asking them if they can borrow a lighter, and the adults seem completely astonished and begin to tell them how bad smoking is and they shouldn’t do it. Even though they are telling the little kids this, they are speechless when the kids ask why they are smoking. After the kids ask that question the adults are handed a pamphlet that says “Why are you worried about me? Worry about yourself.” At the end of the advertisement, it was documented that almost every adult stopped and threw away their cigarette, but none of them threw away the pamphlet that was given to them. Although this advertisement was in a different language, more of these should be done all around the world to raise the awareness of the dangers of smoking. The tone of this ad is the opposite of uplifting to the say the least, almost depressing. While watching it you can tell the adults are very strong willed about getting the kids to not smoke, but after reading the pamphlet they get this very guilty look on their face because they actually realize they are doing it to themselves. I would assume the audience of the advertisement is everyone that is watching it. Therefore, you can only think how the audience feels especially the smokers. Imagine how a smoker would feel if their child came up to them and asked them if they could have one of their cigarettes. If I were that parent I would be very disappointed and ashamed in myself. Not to mention little kids learn about the dangers of smoking at school, so I would be upset if my child came home and told me they learned in school that day that smoking kills. From experience, my dad has been a smoker all my life. As a child, it sucked knowing that when I learned about in school I would never be able to do anything to help him, because just I telling him to quit was not enough to break the addiction. As many as I have told him to quit since me being about six (13 years ago), my words have still not phased him. Advertisements like these are the ones that truly show people why they need to quit the terrible habit. Not only is this advertisement using facts and figures to push people away from smoking, but there are using other persuasive objectives, such as children and the music. As you know, children are cute, little and when they use their puppy dog faces it usually gets them what they want. By using children, this ad is taking a more heartfelt turn and just trying to make people feel bad about them for being smokers. Seeing an innocent little child turn to the deadly habit of smoking is probably the one thing that ruined those peoples days. Not to mention, the fact that a child was giving them the pamphlet basically telling them to shape up is kind of a slap in the face if I were the smokers’ position. Like I said earlier, music is a big factor in advertising. As if this situation wasn’t already terrible, the fact that the makers of this added in very slow, depressing music made it even worse. Music can sell a product, kind of like how the bright colors and puppies sold the DentaStix in the other ad we watched, but it can also turn a person away from a product such as this one. The slow music that has an eerie tone to it can actually put a person on edge, make them uncomfortable or even depress them. I did an experiment myself. After watching the advertisement a couple times, I turned the volume off and watched it and it was just an ad. Then, I turned the volume on and watched and chills went up and down my spine due to the strange tone the music in the ad had to it. Music has a weird way in playing a part of advertisement. The only illogical thing about this advertisement is the fact that smoking isn’t proven to definitely kill anybody. You can smoke all your life and still just die from natural causes, but smoking could’ve played a part in it. On the other hand, some people smoke for two years and then they get lung cancer because that’s just how it works. This advertisement is saying that if these kids smoke they will get cancer and have strokes, but that’s actually not proven it will happen. Overall, this advertisement is an affective one to many people of certain status, but on the other hand some people just don’t care. The reason people don’t care is because it’s not drilled into their brains that it’s bad, which is why more ads like these should be put out into the world to raise awareness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO0qwl5k9R4