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 Linda Thomas
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Linda is the morning news anchor and features reporter for KIRO Radio. This is her local news blog, with an emphasis on social media, technology, Northwest companies, education, parenting, and anything else that grabs her attention.

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Local man is in shocking anti-smoking ad

March 15, 2012 @ 1:00 pm (Updated: 1:03 pm - 3/15/12 )

WAA man's breathing is so tortured from emphysema it takes him more than a minute to speak a word.

Another is paralyzed from a stroke.

Others have had limbs amputated, lungs removed, and heart attacks.

Many can only talk with an artificial device because they've had tracheotomies.

The federal government is trying to shock 50,000 people into quitting smoking with a graphic ad campaign that features a man from Washington state.

One of the print ads features 51-year-old Shawn Wright, who had a tracheotomy after being diagnosed with head and neck cancer four years ago.

The ad shows him shaving, his razor moving down toward a red gaping hole at the base of his neck that he uses to speak and breathe. He's also in the TV ad below talking about how difficult it is to deal with a hole in his throat.

Will this $54 million campaign be alarming enough to get people to quit? On the other side, the government estimates tobacco companies spend $100 billion each year on marketing and promotion of their products.

The adult smoking rate hasn't dropped since 2003. About 20 percent of adults smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

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Comments (7)


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  • fourstringfuror wrote...
    Shock Value
    March 15, 2012 2:19 pm
    And many smoke their entire lives and die of old age. This isn't convincing at all.
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  • Eric Englund wrote...
    once in a great while, a seat belt doesn't help either...
    March 15, 2012 3:38 pm
    Fourstringfuror: Sure, there are those few exceptions out there - but those smokers who live into their 80s/90s are very few and truly the exception. Do you know that around 1,200 Americans die EVERY DAY from smoking related illness? These mortality numbers from the CDC and Surgeon General might not convince you either...but read on if you'd like to be informed: Male and female smokers lose an average of 13.2 to 14.5 years of life, respectively. According to the results of a 50 year study of 34,486 male British doctors, at least half of all life-long smokers die earlier as a result of smoking. Smokers are three times as likely to die before the age of 60 or 70 as non-smokers. In the United States, cigarette smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke accounts for roughly one in five, or at at least 443,000 premature deaths annually. To put this into context, in the US alone, tobacco kills the equivalent of three jumbo jets full of people crashing every day, with no survivors. On a worldwide basis, this equates to a single jumbo jet every hour.
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  • DvdDdg wrote...
    Not convincing?
    March 15, 2012 5:07 pm
    I suspect you are a smoker and that there isn't much that would convince you otherwise. However, I doubt that you are accurate in your statement that "many smoke their entire lives and die of old age." I think you may be making an assumption there. In any case, accurate as your assumption may, or may not be, that is not a gamble that I'd want to take. Both of my grandparents died as a result of lung and throat problems with were caused by years of smoking. My paternal grandmother was on oxygen for her remaining few years until she died. My maternal grandmother ended up with emphysema and even walking from the front door to the street, about 20 or 30 feet, was exhausting for her. She ultimately died wheezing and suffering in a hospital bed. Some do live long lives in spite of smoking for years. Could it be that their physiology is less susceptible to cancer? I don't know. Could it be that they smoked in moderation? I don't know. Clearly not everyone ends up like this, but I think enough do that it warrants thinking about. Some people don't even live long enough to end up with a stoma. I'll tell you this much: Those I have known who have quit smoking have said that their quality of life had improved greatly. They didn't have to struggle to take a breath, so they had more energy to enjoy life. They didn't spend a great deal of the day hacking and coughing, which, as an asthmatic, I can tell you that's not a fun way to spend the day. If you want to smoke, smoke. Your family and friends are the only ones who really care if you do or not. It's your life and you should live it however you want. And if you want to gamble that you'll be among those 90-year-old healthy smokers, more power to you. But, take just one year of your life and, during that year, as you walk around each and every day, count all of the 80- and 90-year-olds that you see and figure out what percentage of them have a cigarette in their hand.
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  • Jeddite wrote...
    AND SO IT GOES
    March 15, 2012 8:55 pm
    Taxpayer money collected from the purchase of cigarettes is then used for anti-smoking campaigns by the federal government. g-g-g-go g-g-g-goverment!
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  • Jeff Schroeder wrote...
    Blaming the Guvment
    March 16, 2012 1:41 am
    If you had the brains to take care of yourself, the rest of us wouldn't have to....
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  • tlmbrt wrote...
    So
    March 16, 2012 2:26 am
    we want people to stop smoking.... what happens to all that tax revenue if they succeed? Our reward will be higher taxes on other things. The government will move on to the next "bad" thing, like fast food or sugar or salt. The Nanny State never stops trying to run our lives!
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  • SickofSeattleite wrote...
    Everyone knows it is bad for you!!!
    March 16, 2012 5:47 am
    Leave them alone. If they want to smoke themselves to death, let them. Why do we need these ads? Are we going to do them on alcohol and obesity? Those are nearly as bad as smoking as far as health concerns go.
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