Repulsive anti smoking adverts.

I agree. If those adverts don't stop you smoking, nothing will.

I used to smoke a couple of cigarettes a day until I saw a documentary showing a pathologist cutting a diseased lung out of a young man. This was in 1974.

I didn't put that very well. I agree they're repulsive but if they persuade people to give up then they're a good thing.

I haven't seen any.

The latest one is awful. It came on while i was eating and i had to go out of the room! It would be interesting to see some statistics to show how effective these graphic adverts are. The problem with anyone who is addicted to any substance that will endanger their health, whether it is alcohol, smoking or drugs is, whatever case you put against it, they think "it won't happen to me". Let's hope this latest campaign will change things.

I don't think they have any effect at all on commited smokers. They may momentarily alarm them, but cigarette addiction can often be psychological as well as physical.
I know that for me it was an obsessive thing.

Me too!!

I thought research had shown that trying to stop people doing something by frightening them didn't work.

Wasn't the chic put into Heroin-Chic by an advertising campaign aimed at frighten young people out of drugtaking by showing thin and wasted youngsters who were addicted to heroin and instead they made the wasted look fashionable.

Well, its certainly argued by most psychologists that positive reinforcement works better than negative. Although the field of anti-smoking has long since recognised a strange dissonance between what people know about smoking at what they actually do about it.

I smoked in my 20s so fully understand that its an addictive habit that is difficult to kick however I doubt hardened smokers pay any attention to these adverts and most younger people watch tv on catch-up etc and do not watch the adverts anyway.

I used to be a 'hardened smoker', highly addicted. I didn't need revoltingly graphic adverts, because I disgusted myself on a daily basis.
I saw a lung diseased by cancer when I was about 14 - someone from the local health authority came to our school to give a talk about smoking. The diseased lung was shown alongside a third of a healthy lung and both samples were the same size. I'm not talking about pictures - I'm talking about actual lungs, preserved in formaldehyde in glass jars . We were all invited to take a close look. I'll never forget how disgusting the cancerous lung looked. But it didn't stop me from starting smoking within a few months.
So my experience says that shock tactics are a waste of time.
When I eventually gave up several years ago, I was surprised to find how easy it was. And I realised that the hardest part was actually making a firm decision to quit. Smokers always make excuses why they can't do it just yet - a holiday coming up, Christmas, a birthday, a party to go to. The truth is there is no 'right' time to do it. You just have to take the bull by the horns and do it.

Having worked in smoking cessation, I agree that the scare tactics don't work. I always found that financial issues were often the thing that made people want to give up. Our helpline was always very busy when the price of fags went up!

It wasn't financial for me. It was the arrival of my first grandchild and the fear that I might not see him grow up.

I'm always giving up. I gave up for a year and then recently started again. It happens when I'm very stressed and upset. I know it is stupid and dangerous and it doesn't help at all being told that.

Eloethan, didn't Mark Twain say, " Stopping smoking is easy. I've done it hundreds of times".

In my university days I and friend worked together on a holiday job. She, almost, chain smoked. I didn't smoke. At the end of the summer I went up to London and had a wonderful time frittering all my money away on clothes. I got back to my digs and DF looked enviously at my loot and said 'If I didn't smoke I could have bought clothes like yours'.

Did it stop her smoking or even encourage her to smoke less? Of course it didn't. She smoked for at least another 15 years until it seriously damaged her health.

If I had seen that advert as a teenager it would stopped me before I started.