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- This post was sponsored by Tobacco Free New York State as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in this post are those of the writers.
I am old enough to vaguely remember a certain rugged cowboy with a cigarette- both as a cultural figure, and also as a real thing, inasmuch as a TV ad is a real thing. Of course, after that, there were various ad campaigns that come to mind: animals, some sort of trade in cards to win products, that stuff. I also remember that my parents were vehemently anti-smoking. At least 2 of my 4 Grandparent’s lives had probably been cut short as a direct result of smoking. And by the time I was 16, everyone knew that smoking was a terrible idea. But being told it was bad, knowing it was bad: this wasn’t enough to dissuade me and a lot of my friends. Now there is less cultural promotion, more general public knowledge of the risk and general grossness, but that doesn’t mean there is not still a huge risk.
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I get annoyed when I see someone smoking on my street, and I admit that things as have gotten a lot better, this doesn’t happen a lot. I resist the urge to confront them, but I don’t like having to explain it to my three-year-old daughter. I’m perfectly at ease talking to her about death, or injury, or sickness- these are realities that I accept. But smoking is something I wish I didn’t have to explain. I just tell her that those people are very confused and that they are doing something they shouldn’t. I can only hope that smoking will have less cultural relevance by the time that she is a teenager. Can you believe the average age of a new smoker in New York is 13! That is terrible. And then there are e-cigarettes..from 2014 to 2018 e-cigarette use grew 160% among high school students. I don’t even like saying that as I would prefer to tell kids no one is doing it.
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Kids love bright colors and wrapping, let it be crayons and not cigarettes
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Anything that we can do to make our city smoke free is welcome, in my opinion. I was so glad to see it taken out of the parks. And I see fewer ads at kid level than I used to, but we need to continue working on it! I don’t want my daughter to walk into a store and think that cigarettes or e-cigarettes are even something that someone might buy. Seeing the displays in the store with all the colors makes them look like candy or something fun…it’s especially hard to explain to a kid who still thinks if it comes in a pretty package it must be good. That is why the Seen Enough Tobacco campaign from Tobacco Free New York State is so important. They have a petition up to get tobacco products out of our kid’s line of sight and that makes sense to me.
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