Czech TV makes bid for Australian anti-smoking advertisement
I'm sure many of you have seen it - the Australian anti-smoking TV advertisement that has created enormous controversy and been shown on TV stations around the world. Czech public television, which recently carried the story in its prime time news programme, is now trying to acquire the right to run this TV ad on a regular basis. Daniela Lazarova has the story:
The controversial TV spot shows close ups of a brain, lungs and blood vessels damaged by smoking. The voiceover explains that the damaged aorta belongs to a thirty two year old man - and the clip goes on to show how much damage smoking does to your body in just one year. Viewers are shown in a fairly drastic manner that the effects of smoking are doing them a lot of harm now - not in thirty or forty years' time as many people tend to believe. Should viewers be subjected to this gruesome sight and can it be effective? Dr. Eva Kralikova is a leading Czech specialist in smoking related diseases and substitution therapy.
"I do not think it is too much. It shows the reality and it contains information about what smoking means. Cigarette and tobacco ads give you the impression that smoking is fashionable, something that will make you successful and even healthy and slim. Some brands - such as Crystal Clear - claim that breathing their smoke is like breathing fresh air - which is complete nonsense. So why not show what smoking really does to your body on TV? This is merely providing information and it was quite successful in Australia."
What reactions to have you heard - here in the Czech Republic?
"I spoke to a few people and all of them said "Oh, I saw that clip on TV -did you watch? That was really something!" and " I had no idea that smoking can cause all those things". So mostly they were surprised. Most people think that the most frequent cause of death as a result of smoking is lung cancer -but that is not actually true -it is cardio-vascular disease. So people are definitely not informed enough about the effects of smoking, about its contribution to some 60 diseases and to mortality. Smoking kills one fifth of Czechs. Every day 60 people in this country die of smoking related diseases. This is something that people generally do not know."
