CDC Plans New Anti-Smoking Campaign This Summer

Installment of gruesome “Tips from Former Smokers” coincides with new data on smoking habits.

June 25, 2014

WASHINGTON – Beginning next month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will launch a new series of ads for its 2014 “Tips from Former Smokers” campaign. 

The ads will run nationwide for nine weeks, starting on July 7, in a variety of media formats and two Spanish-language ads will also run on national Spanish media channels.  The launch of the ads, which are gruesome and hard-hitting portrayals of the effects from longtime smoking, comes as CDC is also releasing new data on how many U.S. adults use some form of tobacco.

According to the CDC, the campaign has helped hundreds of thousands of smokers quit since it began in 2012. “These new ads are powerful. They highlight illnesses and suffering caused by smoking that people don’t commonly associate with cigarette use,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, in a press release.

More than 1 in 5 U.S. adults uses some form of tobacco regularly, according to CDC’s National Adult Tobacco Survey. The survey shows that while the prevalence of cigarette smoking among adults every day or some days was 18% percent during 2012–2013, when factoring in use of all combustible products — such as cigars, little cigars, cigarillos, pipes and hookahs — prevalence increases to 19.2%. 

Including non-combustible tobacco products such as e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco increases prevalence to 21.3%. When the survey factors in adults who say they use tobacco products rarely — that is, occasionally or intermittently —prevalence rises to 22.9% for combustible tobacco products and 25.2% for tobacco products overall.

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