Is the cigarette dead?

At first I was like, another cool typographical animation on another cause we should care about. After viewing, I also though any idea that’s just a good, common sense idea to get behind doesn’t need so much eye candy, even though my inner animation freak says the work from FL2 Interactive is suh-wheet.

For years though, we were bombarded with Smoking is Good for you messages. Seems all we need now is the same amount of time invested in Smoking is unhealthy messages. This clip is part of a larger upcoming effort and Colorado Quitline site to help you kick the habit. Will it and things like truth eliminate smoking though.

“Zero” cases is always a nice goal for diseases like polio, etc., but is that even possible here? As the habit gets slowly squeezed out of most public spaces, there’s still going to be holdouts wanting to be left alone. I grew up with a smoking family. As the lone holdout, I can TELL you there will be those you just won’t reach, no matter how many scary stats you throw at them or how much you tax them.

So the question becomes just what is the percentage of smokers the anti-tobacco movement can live with here? They’ll need to be address that at some point.

Then there’s the conflicting message with support for medical marijuana. It’s only for people with a doctor’s note, but c’mon, isn’t that going to be the gateway to legalizing it for all? Then there’s the tax argument which says legalize just so the government gets its cut, the way they’re trying with medical now. The logic being that the government only cares about vices it can tax. (I won’t even get into the argument of whether smoke from weed or tobacco is worse.)

But in terms of taxes, cigarettes have been taxed for a long time, and now, taxed purposely higher as a way of discouraging the habit. (Hello $11 in the NYC.) So how do you tax to prohibit one type of smoking but not the other, and still expect to get people to quit?

It might take more than animations.