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The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the first E-cigarettes anti-smoking campaign that features a former tobacco and E-cigarette smoker who survived a lung collapse and due to that frightful experience finally managed to stop smoking.
E-cigarette advocates, on the other hand, consider this new ad to be “patently dishonest”.
This recent advertisement is part of the CDC campaign known as “Tips”. The strategy was to include real smokers and their stories in order to show the public what smoking can do to a person. That way, people might actually give up on the unhealthy habit.
The new ad is the first to include a person who talks about her personal encounter with E-cigarettes. The advertisement is both in radio and print format. The person that presents her personal experience is a 35-year-old woman from Tennessee named Kristy.
In the commercial, she talks about how she started to use E-cigarettes thinking it might help her quit smoking tobacco as she was suffering from severe “smoker’s cough”. Unfortunately, she ended up smoking both products and in the end, returned to smoking just the regular tobacco cigarettes.
She also described how she felt during that period:
“When I smoked, I had no energy. It just affected my whole life.”
After months of using e-cigarettes, she went to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a collapsed lung and early stage COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder). This was the moment she decided to quit smoking tobacco and e-cigarettes. She went “cold turkey”.
The ad continues with her saying she hopes her story will help people give up on this unhealthy habit before it’s too late.
She then talks about all the benefits that came from giving up on tobacco:
“I can actually breathe. I can play with my kids.”
E-cigarette supporters consider this campaign to be misleading as it presents a false connection between cigarettes containing tobacco and the electronic versions. Gregory Conley, the president of the American Vaping Association stated that this ad is another one of the CDC’s attempt to “mislead smokers into believing that vaper products [including e-cigarettes] may be hazardous” to their health.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is now planning a set of regulations that would require e-cigarette manufacturers to place warning labels on their products which would also include all contained ingredients.
Image Source: abc News
