Children’s Art for Anti Smoking Packaging
Almost at traditional as the singing of Auld Lang Syne, New Year’s Eve the discussion of stopping smoking as a resolution comes up. The latest idea from Public Health England is to get children to create artwork for the new plain packages for cigarettes to be rolled out in May. Now, of course, all things should be looked at in order to get the smoking rates down. However, I am not sure that this initiative will do any good at all.
Many smokers have children most of whom will try at various points of their lives to try to get their smoking parent off cigarettes. The most common way is guilt, to me this recent initiative is no different than trying to guilt people into becoming non smokers. Guilt is one of the poorest motivations for goal setting and achieving. Guilt is a way to control and most of us do not want to be or feel controlled, so I have to believe sadly that this is another ill conceived idea to help smokers stop smoking.
I tell my students that smokers are often treated as if they are fools and they way they are marketed to and spoken to validates this. I would like to suggest that the best way to encourage smokers to become non smokers is to treat smokers like adults rather than trying to guilt them into being non smokers.
