To be angry at the "I 'm scared my dad will did" smoking advert was shown at the cinema yesterday during a PG film?

[Notalone]

I fully understand the purpose of the advert, I really do, but I also feel it is installing fear that wasn't there before into children.

I took DS to the cinema yesterday to see a PG and there were lots of children there. This advert came on and it really scared DS as DP smokes. I gave up smoking a while ago and I am aware that smoking is stupid, dangerous etc but I cannot force DP to give up until he is ready. However DS is now convinced his dad is going to die soon. I feel these adverts may well have kids all over the country terrified and tbh this makes me angry as it is not fair on them. What do you think?

I don't like tha ads. My DH maybe smokes 1 cigarette a month and our children are now hysterical about it.

these adverts where what prompted dd1 to write me a letter saying she is scared i'm going to die from smoking and begged me to stop. I have been stopped 8 weeks so far after 13 or so years of smoking. The adverts are not nice but they had the desired effect on my life.

And that's the point. Children whose parents smoke already have this fear. It's not been invented for this advert. The point of the advert is to get that message across to the parents who are willfully ignoring the fact that their children are scared (and for good reason). Some smokers will die from smoking related diseases when their children are young (as has been said on this thread by two or three people). It's not just a couple of years off your life expectancy that's being risked, it's really nasty things that will affect your children way more than a shock from an advert, like watching a parent having therapy for cancer, or losing their voice, or having an early heart attack. It's a sad thing that people (in general) don't connect their behaviour to the consequences and need a jolt like this to get them there, but particularly at this time of year (National No Smoking Day) there are always adverts of this sort. I don't think this one is any different to the ones that show people in their hospital beds, or speaking with a voice box, or at funerals. If you are the child of a parent who smokes all these ads are scary.

My father died of lung cancer and used to sit outside the radiotherapy department smoking with nurses when he went for treatment. When my mother says that he really loved us and her I always think not enough otherwise he would not have smoked himself to death, left my mother lonely and vulnerable and the rest of us very sad, including the grandchildren he didn't live to see. Personally I would like to see all smokers taxed to oblivion, scared sh**ss by adverts etc and battered with a stick until they see the error of their ways . They are so totally selfish in this respect, my oldest school friend who has just had extensive treatment for tongue cancer is also carying smoking and says it is her choice and hurts no one but her - but what about her children and elederly mother? Zero tolerance is th only answer.

So ban smoking.

I suggested it earlier.

I agree higgle, if people don't want their DCs scared the answer is in their own hands-STOP. Before they get very old DCs know that smoking kills with or without adverts.

I also think the ends justfy the means. I thought the previous one with the crying child addressing the camera about what it was like to find out your dad has been diagnosed with cancer was very good.

My dad smoked about 60 a day from the age of 14. My sister and I occasionally asked him to give up (it was the 80's and you could still smoke on planes and in offices). He would just make a joke of it.

He was diagnosed with a smoking related cancer on valentines day when he was 49, ( i was 18 and my sister 15) it was inoperable. He died a horrible death only 10 weeks later in pain on the bathroom floor.

When my siter, my mother and I got back from the hospital after he died. We went into a room and screamed and cried for about 4 hours. Just couldnt stop. They should film things like that for the adverts, thats the reality of smoking and what it can do to families.

Apart from the selfish smoking, my dad was a great father and i've missed him every day over the last 16 years.

You can get as angry as you like with smokers, if that makes you feel good, but taking it out on small children is not big or clever.

Wow! This has caused quite a big reaction. Sadly this fear is now installed inside DS and can't be taken back now. Its too late. I wonder how many other children are the same. This advert is great but not to be shown to kids. DP has heard it on the radio and always turns it down or over. He knows he should give up but is in denial I think. I can't force him and am sick of the rows we have each time I talk to him about giving up. I really hope he can some day soon

Agree with Edam. Wholeheartedly.

Agree with nooka.

If a parent is seriously concerned that these adverts are distressing for their child, then they should put their child's distress ahead of their desire to smoke.

If an advert puts my kids off smoking then great. We don't smoke, they aren't going to be terrified that we are about to die (in fact dd was more worried about the film on Comic Relief about the girl with an alcoholic mother, and entreated me to 'never drink wine' ). But I don't think that making an association that smoking kills, when they are young can possibly be a good thing.

The Madeleine McCann ad was different imo, because that really did frighten children into thinking a stranger was going to 'steal them'. Whereas, smoking will damage their health. And they have a choice not to. And so do parents. I think it is at least triple pronged - makes parents think, makes children nag their parents to stop and prevents children starting. Bingo.

If a parent is seriously concerned that these adverts are distressing for their child, then they should put their child's distress ahead of their desire to smoke.

I'm seriously concerned for these adverts are distressing for my child and I don't smoke!

Children here 'I'm afraid my dad will die' and they don't connect it very well, or they conclude it means everyone who smokes.

Also, would you tell everyone who's fat to lose weight in quite the same fashion? Because again, obesity is catching up with and in some parts has even surpassed smoking as a leading cause of preventable death in the West?

Who about the same advert, with an obese person eating cake?

Or how about the same advert, with Mum sitting down at table with a glass of wine, because drinking causes cancers and heart disease, too?

I worry all the time my sister will drop dead of fat, literally, like our first cousin, an obese person who died of heart attack at the age of 39, leaving behind a 2-year-old daughter. With our family history, the obesity tipped her over the edge, because she never smoked and probably drank a total of one bottle of wine over teh course of her life.

I worry because she just won't stop eating too much of the wrong foods and exercise, even with her hypertension.

But it's her life.

'If a parent is seriously concerned that these adverts are distressing for their child, then they should put their child's distress ahead of their desire to smoke. '

Sorry, I missed out the quotation marks.

'If a parent is seriously concerned that these adverts are distressing for their child, then they should put their child's distress ahead of their desire to smoke'.

There is no point in shooting the messenger! The message is true-burying your head in the sand and ignoring it isn't going to stop it being true. Why put your DC through the distress when there is a very simple answer?

.

In response to all the people who keep saying 'But you wouldn't tell a four year old that their overweight mum is going to die' - well, no, but have you seriously not seen all the publicity around healthy eating?

Smoking is not being singled out here! Look at advertising campaigns, look at PSHE in schools (with young children being taught facts about things like healthy lifestyles). I can't see why anyone would object to campaigns designed to encourage families to engage in healthy lifestyles, and which discourage them from actively harming themselves and those around them. That's the bottom line.

With parenthood comes the need to be responsible and to take responbsibility too.

Smoking is detrimental to health and not something that we should display as acceptable behaviour to our children.

It is such a cop-out to say that smoking is an addiction and that the need to do it is beyond the smoker's control. That simply removes the need for the smoker to take any responsibility for their actions - very convenient eh? Particuarly when you have children and don't want to be seen as irresponsible parent and a bad role model.

However, once again, smokers would prefer to blame the government for making this advert and upsetting their chilren rather than looking at themselves first. As someone else has pointe dout on this thread already, it's pretty simple - if you don't smoke your chidlren needn't be upset by this advert.

I think it's what they call a no-brainer.

Smokers, for a change, take some responsibility for your own actions and the consequences of them too.

'Smoking is not being singled out here! Look at advertising campaigns, look at PSHE in schools (with young children being taught facts about things like healthy lifestyles). I can't see why anyone would object to campaigns designed to encourage families to engage in healthy lifestyles, and which discourage them from actively harming themselves and those around them. That's the bottom line.'

Yeah, it is. We don't get adverts aired before the watershed that imply that everyone who drinks will die, everyone who's obese will die, everyone who works the night shift is going to get cancer, etc.

I don't smoke.

But I have a 5-year-old who is still trying to work out what death is and anything concerning the death of a parent, that's all she sees. She's not able yet to discern what the true message of this advert is (she has learning difficulties as well).

I've lodged a complaint about this ad for that reason.

Agree with pooka and edam, and pooka - don't give up hoping your mum will quit.

Mine started at 21, smoked all the while she was pregnant with me (it was the 70's!), and had got up to almost 20 a day. Nothing I did or said could convince her to stop - it was almost like she had to continue to prove a point that she wouldn't be told what to do.

Then she came to DD's 2nd birthday party. She had 2 fags left and decided she would smoke them at home that evening and that would be the last of it, and it has been.

She did it at the age of 67, completely off her own back when the time was right for her without any stopping smoking aids at all (unless you count several kilos of wine gums!)

DD is now 4.6 and thanks to her giving up she doesn't even know what a cigarette is

expat- there is a big difference with drinking a glass of wine now and again or working the night shift.

There isn't the weight of evidence that those things per se are harmful. Whereas there is a very clearly proven link that smoking any amount, however small, is harmful. Likewise with the weight issue. It is more complex, because everyone needs food to stay alive. It's when people eat an unbalanced diet, or eat too much that it becomes an issue. The difference with smoking is that it is a totally unecessary act which is proven to be extremely toxic!!

I have no problem with being honest with children and young people, about the importance of healthy eating, looking after one's body etc - and smoking is one aspect of that. Why not face facts?

I forced my DP to give up smoking by telling him, when I got pregnant, that I would match him cigarette for cigarette and that it would therefore be his fault if our unborn child was damaged as a result.
Neither of us has smoked since!
Yay for emotional blackmail.

that comic relief film about the girl with an alcoholic mother obviously worried ds - I had to reassure him that it's only people who drink an awful lot of alcohol who get very ill. (I only drink occasionally as my social life is not terribly exciting - but ds knows I do have a glass of wine now and then so was worried by the 'alcohol is dangerous' message.)

Violet, there is LOADS of evidence that being obese is causing huge health problems, studies that suggest even a glass of wine a day can increase your risk of cancer (see pooka's link). Overeating and drinking are completely unecessary, too.

Which is why I have no problem with hard hitting campaigns to raise awareness of the dangers of alcohol, over eating and smoking expat!!

My kids are all aware of the dangers of the above. I just didn't really get the spurious 'argument' some posters were putting forward that suggested that smoking is singled out and no one ever criticises people for being obese, drinking excessively etc. Open a newspaper, surf the net, watch TV or go into any classroom and you will find LOADS of information being presented honestly and openly about the risks of the above. So why single out smoking as some special case that we all have to be secretive about to try to deny the fact that it is an extremely harmful activity.

Why is it necessary to try to get that message across by scaring the hell out of little kids by implying that EVERYONE who falls into a certain mode of behaviour is going to die?