Installing scary images in kids minds to stop them smoking.

[MickyMacgraw]

(there are no images in my link just a column about using them)

http://uk.news.yahoo....acco-use-d831572.html

Would this be a good idea to show school kids these images? Even though it could possibly save their lives? We show images on packs but the only people seeing them are already addicted smokers so this just wouldn't work. How about showing these images not to rebelling teenagers that maybe have started smoking nor to kids that are too young to understand but somewhere in the middle possibly 8-11 year olds where they can understand more without something like this traumatizing them. I think it's better to plant these seeds in their young impressionable minds in the hope that they will have that image that overrides any urge to smoke in the future.
Any thoughts on this?

[Buenchico]

They were showing us pictures of diseased lungs and cancerous mouths when I was a kid back in the 1960s, so it's not exactly a new idea!

My own feeling (having also worked on health education projects during my teaching days) is that such images reinforce the message to those youngsters who were unlikely to smoke anyway but do little to prevent those who're likely to succumb to peer group pressures from taking up smoking.

Chris

[MickyMacgraw]

Hi Buenchico.
Was there any studies done to compare the number of smokers in your generation and compared it with the previous ones?

[Buenchico]

Hi Micky
Smoking starting to fall noticeably (and consistently) from about 1970 (when out generation was reaching adulthood) so perhaps those images worked?
http://tinyurl.com/34a9fr9

[LazyGun]

It worked for one person at least - My father gave up principally due to a TV show comparing images of lungs from both smokers and non-smokers, which graphically showed the damage done - so scary pictures can work - and he was an adult :)

Personally, I think for kids, peer pressure and costs are probably likely to be the more effective levers......