Tobacco Control promoting smoking
It is difficult, if not impossible to go anywhere these days without tripping over No Smoking signs.
The damned things are everywhere – every shop, public building or mode of transport has little stickers and big stickers, not to mention signs.
I have often mused in the past as to whether these signs and stickers have an unintended consequence. Surely they are all pushing smoking to the fore of conciousness? Those who never smoke must be aware of them, and they would make those people actually think about smoking? If for example everywhere you went you saw signs demanding No Pierced Ears Allowed, it would make people more conscious about pierced ears? It might never have crossed peoples minds to get their ears pierced, but with all these signs around they would become aware of the subject and maybe even decide to give it a try?
There is an advertisement running on Irish television [or there was – it may have died the death] which told us there were “more quitters in Ireland than smokers”. It urged us all to become quitters too. So not only are they displaying a sequence of people smoking cigarettes, they urge us to become quitters. I don’t know about you but I always interpreted being called a quitter as somewhat disparaging? [If you desperately want to see the ad, search “HSE Quit I Will Survive” in YouTube – I ain’t gonna clutter this site up with their nonsense]
Anyhows, it transpires that I may be right.
So what Tobacco Control is doing is effectively advertising smoking. All the signs may differ, with different messages or different images but they all have just one thing in common – Smoking. It is drilled into our eyes and minds wherever we go.
After all, there’s no such thing as bad advertising?
In the same sense, “Only two school children at a time”, is probably the most dubious shop sign.
I always reckoned January would be the worst time to try and quit. All those posters and adverts. There are cigarettes at every turn. The last thing you need if you’ve decided to be a nice little sheople.
Welcome Abi!  I agree. When you are trying to cut down [or quit] there is nothing worse than being constantly reminded. My desire for a puff of the pipe increases exponentially according to the number of No Smoking signs in the vicinity.
Tobacco control could turn out to be a very clever ploy by the tobacco companies to sell more product and give the government an excuse to raise taxes do you think? Which means the anti-smoking puritan fascist zealots are just useful idiots.
Isnât there something in psychological literature that says that the subconscious canât visualise a negative (i.e. something NOT happening), and so visualises what it can which, in the case of a stimulus like a picture of a smoking cigarette â even one with a red line through it â makes people think of smoking? The traditional test for this is to make the statement âthe dog is NOT chasing the cat.â In most cases, just for a fraction of an instant, the first thing that comes into a personâs mind is a picture of â you guessed it â a dog actually chasing a cat. This despite the fact that the statement clearly says that this isnât happening.   Even with a bit of further concentration, the best most people can come up with is an image of a dog doing something else, which isnât quite the same, is it? Because, when you think about it, it simply isnât possible to imagine what something NOT happening actually looks like.Â