Stained teeth and rotting gums, decimated lungs, inflamed tumors – these are just some of the sights now confronting smokers who light up in New York, thanks to that city's distribution of thousands of free matchbooks emblazoned with images of the ravages of smoking.
"Many countries put these images right on the cigarette pack, where they belong," said New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas R. Frieden. "While the US hasn't done this yet – and New York City is pre-empted from requiring cigarette package labels – we are putting these images where New Yorkers buy cigarettes, just before they light up, in the hope they'll think twice about the decision to continue smoking."
The new graphic-image matchbooks were rolled out in September at over 132 cigarette retailers in the South Bronx, East and Central Harlem and North and Central Brooklyn, and are an extension the city's 2008 "Eating You Alive" campaign.
Giving smokers a "reality check" on the potential consequences of the habit does boost quit rates, experts note. Writing earlier this year in Cancer Prevention, researcher Dr. David Hammond, of the University of Waterloo, noted that "smokers consistently identify the most provocative, arousing images as the most effective messages" in helping them to quit.
In fact, NYC health officials say the matchbook campaign is inspired by successful efforts in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Canada and Chile, where cigarette packs carrying gruesome images have driven smoking rates downward. "The reality of smoking is ugly and devastating," said Sarah B. Perl, New York City's assistant commissioner for tobacco control. "We hope these images will encourage New Yorkers to get the help they need to quit."
The matchbook launch was quickly followed by the reintroduction in October of a series of extremely effective 30-second television ads featuring Ronaldo Martinez, who lost his voice box to smoking-linked throat cancer at age 39, and now breathes through a hole in his throat.
With the aid of buzzing mechanical device pressed to his throat, Martinez – once an avid swimmer – tells viewers that a dip in the pool would be lethal now and even bathing or shaving is dangerous. His dream of becoming a major league baseball umpire is also finished. "Nothing," he says, "will ever be the same."
The ads, originally produced by the Massachusetts Department of Health in 2001, quadrupled calls to NYC's smokers-quit line when they were first aired in 2006.
The recent initiatives in New York City are in keeping with the tough anti-smoking policies of two-term Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ex-smoker who pushed through a city-wide ban on smoking in Big Apple restaurants in 2003. That move, along with other aggressive efforts to help New Yorkers quit, has led to a 300,000 decline in the number of adult smokers in the city in recent years, health officials say.
