With the passage of tougher new restrictions on smoking recently, the antismoking movement has intensified. The movement has been taken up by health organizations across the country, as well as the federal governments and many state governments, with many health communication campaigns being designed to combat health problems, including and especially smoking. However, overall, recent research is showing that Americans are not pursuing quitting smoking in the 1990s with the same zeal they were in the 1980s. Some of that may be from confusion over conflicting messages from the media. Health communication campaigns must clarify and simplify information and create campaigns with the same spirit and informative entertainment value as any elite advertising agency would.
Health Communication Campaigns Against Smoking
On a bright, brisk spring afternoon last week, Bill Clinton threw out the first ball at the Cleveland Indians' opening-day game. The president had just helped kick off the baseball season in Jacobs Field, a sleek, brand-new, $169 million stadium, a large chunk of which was financed by a 4.5 cents-a-pack local tax on cigarettes. Yet no one, no matter where they are sitting, is permitted to smoke in the open-air stands. This is the type of conflicting information that health communication professionals have to deal with, not only on a city by city basis, but also on a day by day basis. These forlorn scenes may be just a transitional phase. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders says, "I foresee that one day America will be smoke-free, but not in my lifetime. We have 40 million people who are addicted to smoking. We've got to help them get over their addiction, and that's going to take a while" ("An Anti," 1995, p. 14). For health communication campaigns and the people who create them throughout the United States, the game these days is hardball.
For years, smokers and nonsmokers have managed an uneasy truce: Live and let live...