Title: Cigarette Smoking Cessation Suggestions and the Professional and Public Responses over Time
Abstract:
As I researched magazine and newspaper coverage of NYS cigarette smoking prevention initiatives, I found that the further back I went, the more articles and blogs pointed out that people were opposed to the constant nagging of anti-smoking ads and that they just weren’t helping to do much of anything. They were quick to point out that the decline in the number of smokers had stopped or that people continued to smoke in public places. On the other hand, articles that were more recent actually backed what the state was doing and discussed surveys and statistics that proved the initiatives were helping deter teenagers from smoking while lowering the number of smokers in the state. This shift in media coverage is what I will focus on in my paper.
My paper will discuss the various suggestions for smoking cessation from the 1960’s to today that were presented in the media. Additionally, I will try to discover the effectiveness of the cessation recommendations by comparing the number of active smokers with the cessation recommendations over time. Finally, I will try to understand how the public and the professionals responded to the different propositions. Over time, the media was responsible for changing the public opinion on cigarette smoking, but the change in smoking cessation suggestions is very important because it exposes what the politicians, scientists, and the public actually knew that logically supported their cessation strategies at the time.
Annotated Bibliography
- “Tobacco.” New York State Department of Health. http://www.health.ny.gov/prevention/tobacco_control/ (accessed September 9, 2012).
This link provides the NYS DOH website that deals very extensively with cigarette smoking. Some helpful links on the website include: a current policies tab that explains in detail the initiatives the TCP (tobacco control program) has implemented in NYS, fact sheets with smoking statistics over time from first-hand smoker death to second-hand smoker death, a list of community partnerships, with phone numbers, that shows the amount of participants in the TCP’s initiatives. This will obviously help my paper because it will give me a basic understanding of the different initiatives taken and the facts about smoking that I can then translate to my paper before the discussion of the public’s reactions to the various advertisements.
- “CDC – Smoking & Tobacco Use.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/index.htm (accessed September 9, 2012).
Much like the link above, this link will provide me with an even more extensive library of facts, reports, advertisement links, statistics, and information on the prevention methods used. The main difference is that this site also has downloadable PDF’s that range from yearly Surgeon General reports, NYS survey results, and graphs with statistical data based on population, race, or age over time. This is useful because it shows the initiatives that worked and those that failed, and I can then connect these to the public’s reaction.
- “Tobacco Timeline: The Twentieth Century 1900-1949–The Rise of the Cigarette.” Tobacco.org : Welcome. http://archive.tobacco.org/resources/history/Tobacco_History20-1.html (accessed September 9, 2012)
This site is related to the above site because it has an extremely useful timeline of cigarettes in America. It also includes media coverage and newspaper headlines about cigarettes over the years. This also provides me with information about the public’s acceptance of smoking that then followed by the public’s education, and eventually, their reluctance to smoke.
- “Plain Packaging Tobacco.” Plain Packaging Tobacco. http://www.plain-packaging.com/Templates/HomePageTemplate.aspx (accessed September 9, 2012).
This website opposes the plain packaging of cigarettes and proposes an argument against doing so. I found many sites arguing for plain packaging so this site will be useful to argue for the other side. From a first look, the site seems to be well organized with a list of issues with plain packaging and a tab filled with news coverage on the topic. It even has a neat slideshow on the homepage that presents their argument against plain packaging, although they do not back up their claims.
- NY Times. “Smoking and Tobacco News – The New York Times.” Times Topics – The New York Times. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/smoking_and_tobacco/index.html (accessed September 9, 2012).
I need to include the New York Times’ Smoking and Tobacco topic site because the NY Times has a vast number of articles, blogs, and editorials about smoking. Seriously, I found articles that date back to 1988 and on that deal with the public smoking ban, surgeon general reports, smoking advertisements, smoking becoming deviant behavior, ads manipulating women, teen smoking, celebrities, Bloomberg, Big Tobacco company, etc. These articles and blogs offer the newspaper coverage my paper requires, and provides me with material to be able to compare the public opinion of cigarettes over the years.
- “Smoke and Mirrors – NYTimes.com.” The Learning Network – The Learning Network Blog – NYTimes.com. http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/smoke-and-mirrors/ (accessed September 9, 2012).
This NY Times site presents a timeline of the public’s changing perception of cigarettes. The overview listed on the website is “students learn about the changing public perception of cigarettes over the century,” and contains many links with information that will definitely be beneficial in my research on the changing media coverage of cigarette prevention over time. Links include TV ads from the 60’s compared to today’s ads, an article titled “Tracing the Cigarette’s Path from Sexy to Deadly” etc.
Chhada Nathan Kabariti
