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Graphic images on fag packets don't deter teen smokers – a tough breed Graphic images on fag packets don't deter teen smokers – a tough breed
(14 days later)
Does the finding that graphic images fail to deter teen smokers surprise anyone? Certainly not me. As someone who, for the last year, has hovered perilously between smoking and non-smoking, but spent the preceding seven years fully committed, I can vouch for the familiar deadening impact that, in time, these photographs have. "Why hello there, moustachioed man with gigantic disgusting tumour protruding from your neck – do you happen to know the whereabouts of my lighter?"Does the finding that graphic images fail to deter teen smokers surprise anyone? Certainly not me. As someone who, for the last year, has hovered perilously between smoking and non-smoking, but spent the preceding seven years fully committed, I can vouch for the familiar deadening impact that, in time, these photographs have. "Why hello there, moustachioed man with gigantic disgusting tumour protruding from your neck – do you happen to know the whereabouts of my lighter?"
According to the Stirling University study, which involved 2,800 children, such images made most non-smokers and experimental smokers (a kind way of describing that annoying breed of "social" smoker who nicks all your fags while bleating about not being addicted) recoil with horror and run away crying, only 14% of young regular smokers shown picture warnings felt that seeing them affected their desire to smoke. This is because, as those of us already enslaved well know, smoking is very, very addictive. As the late, great Allen Carr pointed out in his book Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking (a book I never finished because I didn't want to stop smoking, something which perhaps accounts for my presence in smoking limbo), far from being weak, smokers are actually incredibly strong and hardy beasts. It takes startling levels of bloody-minded commitment and physical stoicism to put your body through such a deeply unpleasant process without fainting, or being sick, or drowning in self-loathing.According to the Stirling University study, which involved 2,800 children, such images made most non-smokers and experimental smokers (a kind way of describing that annoying breed of "social" smoker who nicks all your fags while bleating about not being addicted) recoil with horror and run away crying, only 14% of young regular smokers shown picture warnings felt that seeing them affected their desire to smoke. This is because, as those of us already enslaved well know, smoking is very, very addictive. As the late, great Allen Carr pointed out in his book Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking (a book I never finished because I didn't want to stop smoking, something which perhaps accounts for my presence in smoking limbo), far from being weak, smokers are actually incredibly strong and hardy beasts. It takes startling levels of bloody-minded commitment and physical stoicism to put your body through such a deeply unpleasant process without fainting, or being sick, or drowning in self-loathing.
Because of this innate strength, I'm unsure as to whether rotating the warning images on cigarette packets more frequently will actually make a blind bit of difference. Certainly, there are those of us who have begun to regard Tumour Neck Man as an old friend, a fellow sinner in a world full of sanctimonious bores. Smokers like nothing better than having someone to drag down with them; the power of the complicity, of the ties and the friendships formed in committing this culturally embedded act. "Let's go and get fags," you'll slur to the equally drunken stranger, and your pissed joint mission becomes tinged with the warm fuzzy glow of new friendship (afterwards, you never see each other again).Because of this innate strength, I'm unsure as to whether rotating the warning images on cigarette packets more frequently will actually make a blind bit of difference. Certainly, there are those of us who have begun to regard Tumour Neck Man as an old friend, a fellow sinner in a world full of sanctimonious bores. Smokers like nothing better than having someone to drag down with them; the power of the complicity, of the ties and the friendships formed in committing this culturally embedded act. "Let's go and get fags," you'll slur to the equally drunken stranger, and your pissed joint mission becomes tinged with the warm fuzzy glow of new friendship (afterwards, you never see each other again).
I've always suspected that this is part of the problem with the anti-smoking lobby – they never acknowledge the good things about smoking. They'll admit the power it can hold and the delusion it provokes – the old woman who just says she'll have the odd one, the student who says he'll only use the Silk Cut to make the eight joints a day he's smoking not for the weed but for the nicotine hit – but they'll never say what any smoker knows: some people just bloody love it. As Richard Klein quoth: cigarettes are sublime.I've always suspected that this is part of the problem with the anti-smoking lobby – they never acknowledge the good things about smoking. They'll admit the power it can hold and the delusion it provokes – the old woman who just says she'll have the odd one, the student who says he'll only use the Silk Cut to make the eight joints a day he's smoking not for the weed but for the nicotine hit – but they'll never say what any smoker knows: some people just bloody love it. As Richard Klein quoth: cigarettes are sublime.
It follows then, that, in order to give up smoking, you have to fall out of love with cigarettes. I'm in the process of it, but I still come crawling back for the odd filthy one night stand. Falling out of love isn't the same as the old cliché that "you have to want to give up": much like with the smouldering embers left at the end of a long-term relationship, there will always be that desire to roll around in the ash. I have accepted that a small part of me will always crave a fag, desperately, no matter what. But there's just not enough in it for me any more: the lethargy, the yellow teeth, the expense, my boyfriend's disappointed face. The cruel mistress has become just that little bit too cruel. If you never get to that point, then there's always Champix, the smoking pill. The headaches and the deep fog of depression are vile, but it really does work. At least, it does until you start again.It follows then, that, in order to give up smoking, you have to fall out of love with cigarettes. I'm in the process of it, but I still come crawling back for the odd filthy one night stand. Falling out of love isn't the same as the old cliché that "you have to want to give up": much like with the smouldering embers left at the end of a long-term relationship, there will always be that desire to roll around in the ash. I have accepted that a small part of me will always crave a fag, desperately, no matter what. But there's just not enough in it for me any more: the lethargy, the yellow teeth, the expense, my boyfriend's disappointed face. The cruel mistress has become just that little bit too cruel. If you never get to that point, then there's always Champix, the smoking pill. The headaches and the deep fog of depression are vile, but it really does work. At least, it does until you start again.
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