Anti Smoking Gun Ad Analysis

Smoking Gun

How does one value his or her life? Does one go to the doctor for yearly checkups? Or perhaps one eats healthy and/or exercises daily? Although there are several anti-smoking ad, thousands of adults, as well as teenagers, continue to ruin their health by smoking or chewing tobacco, so do they truly work to persuade viewers to not smoke? Anti-smoking ads provide an insightful view on how much a pack of cigarettes actually costs.

In the anti-smoking ad "The Real Cost Commercial: 'Your Skin' - Menthol Version," a teenager walks into a convenience store and asks for a pack of Menthols while laying down a few dollar bills. The old lady behind the counter precedes to say, "Honey, I'm gonna need more than that," before the young teen tears a piece of skin from her right cheek to "pay" for the pack of cigarettes. After handing over the pack of Menthols, the woman again speaks, saying, "I'll see you again." This product advertisement appeals to pathos by attracting to the emotions of showing the youth of the teenager and how if affects her body to buy a pack of smokes.

The foregoing ad is successful in showing the negativity cigarette smoking provides in one's future. In terms of “buying” the product sold, anti-smoking ad, such as the

various “The Real Cost Commercial” ads, yields the infamous reality of un-escapable addiction. The chain of addicted leads to countless, unsettling complications, including an expansion of substance abuse, issues with money, health, and relationships. Another ad uses imagery to entice viewers by displaying a series of cigarettes progressively dwindling down into a charcoal black snub. This ad also uses the quote “Every breath you take will eventually shorten your life” to add to wording to the image given. Because of this, and the age of the teenage girl in the commercial ad, anti-smoking ads appeals to the audience of not only teens, but adults as well.
While some anti-smoking commercials elusively speak of the effects on those surrounding smokers, most discuss the “cost” of cigarettes. Not only does a pack of cigarettes averagely cost $5.51, but it also cost one’s health. The main idea behind anti-smoking ads today is that smoking costs more than just a few dollars a pack; it costs a life. One smoker alone spends about $1,980 annually if only one pack is smoked per day, which, if conserved, could save thousands, if not millions, of children suffering from hunger. Furthermore, smoking harms nearly every organ in the body, including the heart, blood vessels, lungs, eyes, mouth, reproductive organs, bones, bladder, and digestive organs. It also leads to the following medical conditions: cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, emphysema, reduced lung function, and chronic bronchitis as well as an innumerable amount of smaller, less life-threatening complications.
In some countries, such as Canada, Russia, Mexico, Australia, and parts of Africa, national “smoke-free” legislation is in effect covering all public indoor areas (sometimes with specific exceptions).

Notwithstanding such information, children continue to evolve into a society that does not specify just how life-threatening tobacco is, and, with today’s societal standards, many will never see to believe that peer pressure is not as prevalent as it appears to be in our world today. Anti-smoking ads exist in the countries that do not have a national legislation passed against smoking. Yet, those ads aid in showing just how much of one’s life and freedom is needed in order to so much as humour the idea of buying a pack of

cigs.
According to the American Lung Association, smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke prematurely kills approximately 443,000 people each year. That is at least 443,000 people that may have spent their lives eating healthy, seeing a doctor annually, or actually valuing their own lives. Nevertheless, these people failed to realise that their lungs were just as important. Normally, the lungs are like sponges that soak in oxygen, but for smokers, the more cigarettes smoked the thicker those sponges become and the harder it becomes to collect the necessary oxygen. “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 24,518 people died of alcohol, 17,774 died of AIDS, 34,485 died of car accidents, 39,147 died of drug use--legal and illegal--16,799 died of murder and 36,909 died of suicide in 2009” (“Tobacco”). With a total of 169,632 deaths listed previously, smoking almost triples in number of deaths and surpasses the number of casualties during World War II.
In conclusion, smoking not only takes away one’s freedom throughout their own body as it begins to shut down, but it also takes away one’s entirety. “If smoking continues at the current rate among U.S. youth, 5.6 million of today’s Americans younger than 18 years of age are expected to die prematurely from a smoking-related illness. This represents about one in every 13 Americans aged 17 years or younger who are alive today” ("Fast Facts"). For every one cigarette lit, smoking takes away another 11 minutes from so many unsuspecting victims lifespan.