Is this latest Gov.advert campaign a step too far?

[anotheoldgit]

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Ad-Campaign-Uses-Children-To-Target-Parents-As-Courts-Urged-To-Get-Tough-With-Shops-Who-Sell-To-Kids/Article/200909215380832?lpos=UK_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15380832_Ad_Campaign_Uses_Children_To_Target_Parents_As_Courts_Urged_To_Get_Tough_With_Shops_Who_Sell_To_Kids />
Please do not turn this into a pro or anti-smoking debate, this has been debated on many occasions.

What I ask is, is the Government going just too far by getting kids to scare their parents into giving up smoking?

On yesterdays evening news they reported on how a child had been chosen to take part in one of these Government adverts, and they interviewed the child's mother about what effect it had on her. I now come the part of my argument against this latest ad. campaign, which I do hope the usual people don't accuse me of turning it into a racist comment.

The family in question was a black family, and the question I ask is, would the money used for this latest campaign be better used, if the tables were reversed and the black mother was appealing for their child, not to get involved in gangs and gun crime?

Another slant on this, would it be allowed for an anti-war group to fund an advert on TV and Radio, which featured a mother appealing to Gordon Brown to bring her own and other mother's boys and girls home from Afghanistan, also because of the large number of deaths and injuries?

[jno]

Parents who smoke do risk the health of their children. So it seems legitimate to use children's health as a relevant issue.

As for the rest of your question, you've noted the colour of the family, then introduced gun crime as a wholly hypothetical issue since the campaign is about smoking, and then you hope people won't see you as racist.

[anotheoldgit]

jno

I knew it, I knew it, in fact it was you who I knew would take little heed of my explanations, in your narrow minded quest to try and score points.

Parents who smoke do risk the health of their children. So it seems legitimate to use children's health as a relevant issue.

As I said I did not wish this to be turned into an anti-smoking debate. But seeing that you are rather slow on the uptake, this campaign has nothing to do with their risk to children's health, it is an appeal from the child to get their parent to quit because they don't want them to die.

Regarding the racist issue, since it is a known fact that gang and gun crime is a particular problem among the black communities and since they chose to use a black family for this advert, I thought I would turn it on it's head, and suggest that the money spent on this latest anti-smoking campaign, would have be better spent on trying to reduce gang and gun crime.

Anyone who thinks this is being racist is a bigger fool than it is possible to imagine.

[jno]

thank you for the personal insults, always a sure sign of a winning argument. But I think you will find that the budgets for fighting crime and the budgets for fighting smoking come from different departments (Home Office and Health, probably) and therefore are not simply interchangeable.

Thoughtful of you to remind me of the limits of your imagination, but not necessary, I assure you.

[Panic Button]

I've heard a couple of radio adverts in this camapign, and I think they are excellent.

What a good use of resources.

[mushroom25]

smoking (or not) has been debated many times as you say. And in those debates it is often argued that vehicle exhaust gases do more harm overall than smoking could ever achieve.

So it could equally be argued that the money would have been better spent getting children to persuade their parents not to drive their Chelsea Tractors so much?

[sophie_1003]

I don't think the government is going too far, but I don't think the campaign will work either, me and my brothers asked my parents to stop smoking for years and years and it never worked. My dad has stopped now but it was really up to him to make that decision, he wouldn't have stopped if he hadn't wanted to. The other thing that struck me in the news article was that it mentions children are saying they would never smoke, many children say that when the're young but it doesn't mean they're going to stick to that statement when they're older.

[rojash]

According to Net doctor "Smoking kills around 114,000 people in the UK each year", whereas, according to the Home Office, "[in the year 2007 - 2008] Firearms were involved in 455 serious or fatal injuries".

Perhaps that's why they decided to focus there efforts on smoking rather than gun crime.