Inhaling Fear: Those Graphic Smoking Ads Potentially Encourage Smoking (nytimes.com)

This seemed really surprising to me since I'm disgusted by those ads but I'm not a smoker so I wouldn't know about the craving.

I guess the question is whether to get people to quit or to prevent people from smoking. The ads might work for the latter but not for the former.

I love such bold claims from a 32 person study. :(

I'd like to see some rigorous analysis of the anti-smoking ads run in California. Moreso than the messages 'smoking kills' or 'you shouldn't smoke', they emphasize the message 'tobacco companies/executives are evil'.

That's always seemed to be an unfair use of public funds for nasty politics, to me. (The ads are a lot like election campaign hit pieces.)

I wonder if by blaming third parties for smoking, rather than individual decisions, it subtly enables smokers to avoid making a healthy personal choice. It also fortifies the self-righteousness of anti-smoking crusaders: "we good, they evil, ugh! ugh! ugh!"

"To the contrary, the warning labels backfired: they stimulated the nucleus accumbens, sometimes called the 'craving spot,' which lights up on f.M.R.I. whenever a person craves something" - maybe they were craving to be non-smokers.

I smoke; most of my family smokes, around half of my acquaintances. As best as I can tell:

External messages (warnings, PSAs) have a negligible effect on people who already smoke. The psycho/physiological considerations are much more a factor than how graphic a warning message is.

Instead, they should be doing this study on people who don't smoke. The real goal is prevention.

Personally, I'm a programmer so I don't worry about warnings anyway, only errors.