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Aims:

To raise awareness of:

• ways in which tobacco companies have marketed cigarettes over the years
• how they have sought to recruit young people to cigarette smoking for decades to replace the market dying prematurely from smoking
• the nature of an industry which makes large profits from an addictive product which damages health and causes premature death.

Synopsis:

The Quit series of five programmes has been designed to raise awareness of a range of issues surrounding cigarette smoking and legal controls on the use of tobacco. Using personal testimonies, the audience is introduced to the impact smoking has on people’s health and lifestyle. Smokers and non-smokers alike discuss how addiction to cigarettes has influenced their lives or those of their families. The series also focuses on how tobacco companies use marketing and advertising techniques to influence people’s smoking behaviour.

Programme 4: A Breath of Fresh Air
Using interviews with representatives from the tobacco industry, this programme outlines marketing techniques used to sell cigarettes to consumers. It highlights the fact that tobacco companies aggressively market to teenagers in the hope of recruiting them as smokers, in order to create a new market to replace existing smokers who are dying of smoking-related diseases.

00.00 – 04.30
An old-style American commercial of a High School couple just about to light up. A voice says, ‘Wait’. Cuts to archive footage of US tobacco industry.

Representatives of the industry deny tobacco is addictive. A doctor endorses a US brand in an early advertisement. Alec has a hole in his throat as a result of smoking-related cancer. He regrets he once believed wholesome images.

A former industry chairman acknowledges the addictive nature of tobacco has created a prosperous industry and sees nothing wrong with this. A former marketing consultant says they can hardly say their product will kill people.

‘We don’t smoke this shit, we sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for people who are young, poor, black and stupid’ a former executive tells a ‘Winston Man’ whose brief is to get kids smoking.

Another tobacco executive says if you don’t sell to children you’ll have no customers in 25–30 years. A tobacco producer describes the growing world market. The young couple decide not to light up.

Curriculum Relevance:

This programme has a major PSHE and citizenship focus with opportunities for cross-curricular work involving religious and moral education, modern studies, politics, economics, English, drama and art. It has a locus in whole-school approaches to health and community development.

England & Wales

PSHE and Citizenship: Key Stage 4
National Healthy Schools Standard for Citizenship: Key Stage 4

Northern Ireland

Personal and Social Education Guidance for Key Stages 3 and 4
Social and Environmental Studies: Health and Drugs Education

Teachers should be aware of relevant guidelines for Key Stage 4 emerging from the Civic, Social and Political Education programme of study in the revised NI curriculum, which aims to prepare young people for participation in:

• a culturally diverse and inclusive society (social values)
• a fair and just society (civic values)
• democratic society (political values)

Scotland

Scottish Executive: Guidance on Health Education, PSD, and Citizenship - middle to upper secondary stages.

Activities:

Before viewing
Tell the students they are going to see one of a series of short films focusing on issues around smoking and tobacco control.

After viewing
Key questions:

a) What key message/s was the film trying to get across?
b) What techniques were employed to do this?
c) How successful did individuals feel this was?
d) What impact did the film make on them?
e) Was there anything they didn’t know or would challenge?

Activity
While tobacco companies are marketing and selling cigarettes, health interests are trying to control the damage to health from tobacco smoke. Brainstorm all the different ways people and organisations try to do this. Collect the headings for all the different elements of smoking control and display them on the board. Ask students for specific examples for each one. Which ones are in place in the UK, which are in transition and which are waiting to be introduced? What are the students' thoughts about these attempts to protect people from tobacco smoke? Have any of the class read of issues to do with this in the press or visited other countries with different ideas about tobacco control?

Links:

This web page contains links to other websites that are neither controlled nor maintained by Channel 4 Television. Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of these sites and does not necessarily endorse the material on them.

www.teenz247.com

Explores the issues surrounding tobacco from an upbeat, teen perspective. The site is American but has relevance for young people in the UK and is particularly strong on information relating to the tobacco industry.

www.ash.org.uk

Website of the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Contains sections on all aspects of tobacco control including passive smoking. Has wide-ranging statistics and summaries of recent research.

Quit: Programme 1: A Hole in my Neck
Credits:

Produced and directed by Emma Wakefield