...over at the blog 
Please keep it up.. and don't be afraid to make the CASAA logo & URL a little bigger!
Please keep it up.. and don't be afraid to make the CASAA logo & URL a little bigger!
Diggin' the PSA graphics
- Thread starter Gato del Jugo
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Thanks - it was a lot of work!
We are hoping people will share the blog post link, so hopefully they will see the logo and link to CASAA there on the blog.
I'll post them here, too.
We are hoping people will share the blog post link, so hopefully they will see the logo and link to CASAA there on the blog.
I'll post them here, too.
Note: This is the first in a series of blog posts featuring CASAA's public service announcement graphics.
According to the most recent CDC report, only 6.2% of smokers had successfully quit in the previous year. That means 43 million smokers kept smoking, with most believing that they had no safer alternatives. Ignoring this fact, anti-THR advocates continue to push abstinence-only policies and pharmaceutical products, leading the public to believe that those policies are the safest course for smokers. This is simply not true. Every day that someone inhales smoke, instead of using a smoke-free alternative, they are significantly increasing their health risks. Low-risk, smokeless options (such as modern, smoke-free tobacco products and electronic cigarettes) can hep reduce the health risks for those 43 million smokers who cannot or will not quit smoking this year.
CASAA believes that those who are in between quit attempts and those who will not even try to quit this year deserve to know the truth - there are better alternatives to smoking and there are far safer choices if they want them. Let's not dismiss those who continue to smoke as if they "deserve to die" because they can't or won't quit - harm reduction policies work!
Please support tobacco harm reduction policies! Share this blog post on social media, blogs and online communities or download our public service announcements from casaa.org to post on your own site. Help us get the message out!
Link to share: CASAA: CASAA Public Service Announcement
Just about everything we do or consume has some risk involved. Even something as innocuous as fresh produce, such as spinach, can have hidden dangers. Every day we take simple actions that reduce our risks - from washing our vegetables, to crossing the street at crosswalks, to using condoms. Those actions are called "harm reduction," because while they don't make us 100% safe, they significantly reduce the risk of getting sick. Of course, never smoking is the most effective way to reduce the risk of lung cancer and heart disease, but even that is no guarantee.
Every year, in spite of the high risks, 43 million people continue to smoke. Whether is because they refuse to quit or have tried many times and have been unable to quit isn't what is important. What is important is that there are safer alternatives for them when smoking cessation programs and drugs fail. Maybe not as much as never having smoked at all, but nearly the same, and up to 99% safer than continuing to smoke.
Please support tobacco harm reduction policies! Share this blog post on social media, blogs and online communities or download our public service announcements from casaa.org to post on your own site. Help us get the message out!
Link to share: CASAA: CASAA Public Service Announcement #2
"Harm reduction" is the act of making a risky behavior safer. There are risks we take every day - including driving. In fact, getting in a car is one of the riskiest activities we do. According to the National Safety Council, there are about 10 million car accidents a year - from parking lot bumps to multi-car pileups. More than 2 million people are injured in accidents every year. Yet only about 3 in every 1,000 (about 30,000) of those accidents results in a fatality. That is because of harm reduction policies. Seat belts, air bags, headlights, speed limits and traffic signs all reduce the high risks of driving and save lives.
Smoking is another risky behavior that can benefit from harm reduction policies. In spite of decades of warnings, 45 million people in the U.S. still take the risk. Many are dependent upon nicotine, tobacco or the habit of smoking and just as there are tools to reduce the risks of driving, there are tools to reduce the risks of smoking. Because the greatest health risks from tobacco use are linked to inhaling smoke, it seems obvious that removing the exposure to smoke would significantly reduce the health risks for smokers. Options include modern, low-risk, smoke-free tobacco products, electronic cigarettes and even pharmaceutical nicotine products.
CASAA encourages smokers who are unable to quit to try these alternatives and find one or more that are acceptable and effective replacements for their cigarettes. Unfortunately, some public health organizations and government agencies continue to treat reduced harm products as if they have the same high risks as smoking. Many are even lobbying to have those low-risk alternatives banned from sale, which would leave only the most deadly product (cigarettes) and ineffective gums and lozenges on the market for those who still use tobacco. The idea seems to be that somehow this will encourage smokers to quit. This is akin to banning all of the safety features in cars in the hope that people will quit driving recklessly!
Please support tobacco harm reduction policies! Share this blog post on social media, blogs and online communities or download our public service announcements from casaa.org to post on your own site. Help us get the message out!
Link to share: CASAA: CASAA Public Service Announcement #3
In 1990, the CDC reported that the smoking rate was 25.5% (around 46 million) adult smokers, so when the smoking rate dropped to 19.3% in 2010 there were only...45 million smokers. How can that be? Well, the population went up, so even though the number of smokers remained virtually unchanged, the percentage of smokers went down - making it appear as though there was a significant drop over that 20 year period.
Twenty years of tobacco control policies and there was only a 2.2% drop in the number of smokers! This is especially disappointing when you consider that the Healthy People 2010 objective of a 12% smoking rate would have meant 28 million smokers in 2010 - a goal missed by a whopping 17 million.
Tobacco control organizations prefer point to the smoking rates as evidence that their "abstinence only" policies - which aim only to get people to quit or stop people from starting - are working. So, they use those rate drops to support calls for more smoking bans, more product bans and more "sin" taxes. They also use this smoke-and-mirror "progress" to justify opposition to tobacco harm reduction policies and products, arguing that those are "unproven" to help smokers quit or reduce health risks, so we should continue to use their "evidence-based" policies that work.
However, the real evidence is in the actual number of smokers and that is why you won't see them reporting that number has only dropped by 1 million, because dropping from 25.5% to 19.3 % sounds much more impressive. We need to acknowledge that regardless of whether it's 25% or 19%, there are still well over 42 million adult smokers in the U.S. and come up with policies that actually save lives, rather than policies and numbers that just sound impressive.
Please support tobacco harm reduction policies! Share this blog post on social media, blogs and online communities or download our public service announcements from casaa.org to post on your own site. Help us get the message out!
Link to share: CASAA: CASAA Public Service Announcement #4
Although 69% of smokers say they want to quit, the fact remains that only 52% of them actually try and only 1% to 2% of smokers actually succeed at quitting for more than a year. That means that the 45 million Americans who continue to smoke every year need an alternative that has far less health risks than smoking. The alternatives have been quit or die - until now.
Electronic cigarettes were invented to serve as a safe alternative to traditional cigarettes - for those who cannot or will not quit smoking. They are meant to be a replacement for tobacco cigarettes, not a replacement for nicotine gums and patches. For these smokers, gums and patches are either not an option or simply don't work for them. The effectiveness of e-cigarettes is measured by how many people quit smoking conventional cigarettes, not how many people quit using nicotine.
Around the world, millions of smokers are making the switch to something new that they can enjoy and that won't harm them or their loved ones. Even smokers who aren't trying to quit smoking are trying e-cigarettes and find they are no longer smoking. This is a phenomenon that does not happen with gums and patches, which are only purchased by smokers who are actively trying to quit. Public health should be encouraging this switch, yet they insist on continuing to direct smokers who aren't even trying to quit to ineffective gums and patches, and simply ignore the 30% of smokers who don't even plan on quitting.
Please support tobacco harm reduction policies! Share this blog post on social media, blogs and online communities or download our public service announcements from casaa.org to post on your own site. Help us get the message out!
Link to share: CASAA: CASAA Public Service Announcement #5
The concept of harm reduction is acknowledging that you cannot ban everything that poses health risks and that if you cannot get people to stop doing things that have safety risks, public health has an obligation to encourage the use of alternative products that significantly reduce risk.
Helmet laws have been shown to reduce the risk of head injury by 15% - 45% and public health enthusiastically promotes helmet use, rather than recommend parents keep their children off of bicycles altogether. Yet when it comes to parents who smoke, public health officials refuse to consider nicotine alternatives that would reduce smoking-related health risks by over 99% as acceptable risk. Does this really make sense?
Please support tobacco harm reduction policies! Share this blog post on social media, blogs and online communities or download our public service announcements from casaa.org to post on your own site. Help us get the message out!
Link to Share: CASAA: CASAA Public Service Announcement #6
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People do all sorts of risky things in life, from jumping out of airplanes, to climbing mountains to driving on a freeway. All of these things have the risk of death or severe injury. For all of these things, technology has reduced the risks for those who choose to do them. If we can't get people to stop doing risky things, we find ways for them to do it as safely as possible.
About 90,000 people die each year in the U.S. doing things like walking down the street, driving a car, playing sports, climbing mountains, hunting, skiiing, diving, riding ATV's, bicycling, motorcycling, boating, swimming, horse riding and parachuting. More people used to die from these "every day" things before harm reduction products were developed such as: seat belts, air bags, helmets, better parachutes and life preservers.
Technology has now brought us products like electronic cigarettes and low-risk, smoke-free tobacco alternatives that could save not just 90,000 lives, but over 440,000 lives every year, by significantly reducing the health risks of smoking.
Please support tobacco harm reduction policies! Share this blog post on social media, blogs and online communities or download our public service announcements from casaa.org to post on your own site. Help us get the message out!
Link to Share: CASAA: CASAA Public Service Announcement #7
All of them are brilliant!
Nicely done, CASAA.
Now if only we could get the (estimated) 6 million US vapers each to print one of these out and post them in a public place,we'd have a powerful PR campaign.
Nicely done, CASAA. Now if only we could get the (estimated) 6 million US vapers each to print one of these out and post them in a public place,we'd have a powerful PR campaign.
I wonder how well these could be tweeted?
CASAA tweeted them too:
https://twitter.com/CASAAmedia/status/479391108494286849
https://twitter.com/CASAAmedia/status/479391673806372864
https://twitter.com/CASAAmedia/status/479392038618554371
https://twitter.com/CASAAmedia/status/479392485832007681
https://twitter.com/CASAAmedia/status/479392845246107648
https://twitter.com/CASAAmedia/status/479393194644238336
https://twitter.com/CASAAmedia/status/479393514447306752
Although I'm far from a professional graphic artist & barely know the basics of Microsoft Paint, CASAA has inspired me!
As has the Facebook image from Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids posted 5/18/14...
OH, YEAAHH!
As has the Facebook image from Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids posted 5/18/14...
OH, YEAAHH!
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