The images will be printed on 400,000 matchbooks

A striking new campaign to stop people smoking in New York has been launched by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The campaign will involve shocking images of individuals with various types of cancer such as mouth cancer and throat cancer as well as gum disease. The campaign which is called “Cigarettes Are Eating You Alive” is yet another initiative from the city which was the first one to enact a smoking ban in public places which has been followed by many other American states and also countries all over Europe and Asia.

The images will be printed on 400,000 matchbooks that will be given out to retailers all over New York and will be handed out free to smokers who ask for matches. This is not the first time that the city of New York has used shocking images to deter people from smoking and research has shown that these images are extremely effective. Not only do they encourage people to quit smoking but they also highlight how antisocial and uncool smoking is.

Dr. Thomas Frieden who is New York City’s health commissioner said that they hope that by seeing the images on the matchbooks people would think twice about lighting up a cigarette. He explained that the photographs of the illnesses were stark realities that did in fact affect thousands of smokers in New York every year. Smoking continues to be the single largest preventable cause of death in America and is estimated to kill over 400,000 individuals annually. More research shows that passive or secondhand smoking is also causing cancer, asthma and other respiratory diseases.

There are many different ways to quit smoking such as hypnotherapy, nicotine replacement therapy and the use of drugs such as Champix. The longer you take to take the initiative to quit the more likely you are to end up dying from a slow painful disease.