Video: award-winning public-service ads designed to scare smokers into quitting

View ads from Massachusetts and Armenia designed to scare smokers into quitting.

while directing tobacco-control efforts for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, professor of the practice of public health Gregory N. Connolly oversaw a campaign of public-service ads designed to scare smokers into quitting and to keep youths from viewing the habit as glamorous. The award-winning ads—some brutally graphic—aired in the state from 1995 to 2001 and became a model for similar efforts in other states and countries.

View six examples here:

 

Armenia is one of a dozen nations that have developed anti-smoking ad campaigns in consultation with scholars at Harvard School of Public Health. The video below includes two ads from the Armenia campaign. In the first, the message is that one shouldn't gamble with one's health; in the second, that smoking around one's children is like the children themselves smoking.

You might also like

How AI Is Reshaping Supply Chains

Harvard Kennedy School lecturer on using AI to strengthen supply chains

This Astronomer is Sounding a Warning on ‘Space Junk’

As debris accumulates in low Earth orbit, the danger of destructive collisions continues to rise.

Understanding AI Vulnerabilities

As artificial intelligence capabilities evolve, so too will the tactics used to exploit them. 

Most popular

Keri Russell Calls ‘The Diplomat’ a Love Letter to Public Servants

A Harvard Kennedy School event looks behind the scenes of the Netflix drama. 

The Year a Beat Poet Squatted at Harvard

In 1954, Gregory Corso moved into Eliot House. How he stayed there is a literary legend.

How Philosophy at Harvard Saved Itself

As humanities shrink across higher education, one department is flourishing. Is its success a fluke, or a roadmap?

Explore More From Current Issue

Colorful icons representing sleep, fruit, speech, and a mind with a water lily.

Take this quiz on six healthy habits that Harvard doctors recommend

Two fans celebrate in front of a TV showing a football game.

A new Harvard Kennedy School project aims to harness the power of feral fandom.

A smiling man in a brown plaid suit stands outdoors with greenery in the background.

The professor and former Harvard College dean is the next president of Harvard Magazine’s Board of Directors