Can anti-smoking television advertising affect smoking behaviour? Controlled trial of the Health Education Authority for England's anti-smoking TV campaign 2000; 9 273-82
Anti-smoking adverts on TV can help win the war against ill health caused by smoking, shows research in Tobacco Control. In the UK, smoking accounts for 1 million deaths from cancer and heart disease every decade.
The Health Education Authority (HEA), now the Health Development Agency (HDA), ran a controlled TV advertising campaign in the Tyne Tees, Yorkshire, and Granada TV regions between October 1992 and May 1994. These were the TV regions with the highest prevalence of smoking. The Central region, in which no ads were shown, was used as a comparison. In one region locally organised campaigning was combined with TV adverts.
The adverts, featuring the actor and comedian John Cleese, were designed to motivate and encourage smokers to stop, and stay stopped. They were screened in two phases over 18 months. Almost 5500 smokers and ex-smokers took part in the study.
At the end of the study, almost one in 10 smokers had given up smoking; just over 4 per cent of ex-smokers had relapsed. Smokers and former smokers were more than 50 per cent more likely not to smoke as a result of the TV campaign.
Based on these findings, the researchers estimated that the campaign produced a fall in the prevalence of smoking of more than 1 per cent in the TV regions.
The campaign cost almost £ 12.5 million compared with an estimated annual expenditure by the tobacco industry of £ 100 million on advertising and sponsorship.
Anti-smoking television adverts work, say the authors. And unless the population prevalence of smoking is reduced, they say, the government is unlikely to meet its stated goal of preventing 300, 000 cancer and heart disease deaths over the next 10 years.
Contacts:
Dominic McVey, Health Development Agency, London. dominic.mcvey@hda-online.org.uk
Dr John Stapleton, Institute of Psychiatry, London. j.stapleton@iop.kcl.ac.uk
Journal
Tobacco Control