Originally published at: 2000s PIF depicts people stuck standing on top of gigantic cigarettes | Boing Boing
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What’s a PIF?
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PIF = Public Information Film, the UK equivalent to a Public Service Announcement in the US. I had to go look it up.
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I actually really like these! They’re simple, clear, and convey their message without shaming.
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All I got from this is that smokers should remember to keep their rappelling gear handy.
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Effective. I’d want to get off too if I happened to be on one.
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I don’t think that’s the message at all. I think the message is exactly what the voiceover says: that getting off cigarettes is really, really hard. I don’t see anything in this that warns about the dangers of smoking. I think this ad is a lot more effective than the scare ads you usually see in the US that basically say you’re going to lose your face to cancer if you don’t stop right now.
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This reads like an internal corporate memo. Uses acronyms it never defines, and completely misunderstands the point of its topic, probably intentionally.
Man we could use that in Switzerland, though I guess first we need to stop the sales of candy cigarettes. [Candy cigarette - Wikipedia]
Yes, I totally serious. Saw some kids blowing sugar smoke at each other just the other day.
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Alan Carr’s successful stop smoking program has one main principle: unlearn the idea that quitting cold turkey is going to be a miserable slog. With years of messaging that quitting cigarettes is harder than heroin, people are afraid of withdrawal. There is a whole industry of nicotine replacement that thrives on the idea that you can’t just stop cold turkey. Vapes are the newest flavor.
I don’t know what sort of help they provide over there, but in the USA help quitting smoking is usually based on nicotine replacement. Be skeptical of accepting nicotine replacement as necessary.
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It’s a refreshing take from a period when the US contrastingly leaned more towards scolding, yeah. It’s clever and friendly and extends a hand to smokers instead of rapping their knuckles.
And now the ever-mysterious Popkin has revealed themselves as a Brit, muahahaha 
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Or maybe the author comes from a place where this acronym is ubiquitously understood, like, say, PSA in the US?
Seems like a missed opportunity to briefly explain this. I also had no idea what the heck PIF was
I’m trying to imagine a similarly effective graphic message to the German public, maybe some addicted individual at a table in a conference room opposite a panel of medical doctors and advertising executives, each giving their own spiel about how the 9 in 10 doctor bit was just a joke–no, it was fake, not true, fiction, that, actually, smoking is not good for one’s health and that, yes, actually, cigarettes do kill.
Are candy cigarettes proven to be a gateway to real cigarettes? I don’t know about that. Next you’ll want to ban water guns because they lead to firearm ownership.
If you want to ban cigarettes, ban cigarettes.
I think candy cigarettes are more like the waiting room, rather than a gateway. Nonetheless, I did both and managed not to be addicted to either. Moving to a state that more or less banned smoking tobacco, except in your car, helped.
A 2007 study surveyed 25,887 adults and found that “[c]andy cigarette consumption was reported by 88% of both current and former smokers and 78% of never smokers”, a statistically significant difference that the authors suggested indicates a connection between candy cigarette consumption as a child and smoking as an adult.[7][8]
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A Scarfolkian archive here
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Sure, but does that connection equal causation? Just because more people who smoke cigarettes also consumed candy cigarettes as kids doesn’t mean the candy cigarettes contributed to their smoking.
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When I lived in Germany 14 years ago, I was struck by two things:
- Germany has some of the strictest air pollution laws in Europe, and
- German society has a very relaxed attitude towards smoking.
How much has that changed?
