Smoking Matters

"Smoking Kills". Two simple words to describe something horrible, yet millions of people in the world still continue to smoke. Smoking has plagued the world since it came out in the 9th century, and now the ever-prescence of cigarettes in the 20th century and new electronic nicotine vaporizers have made smoking more common than ever. Although the government views nicotine and tobacco as a legal drug, it still has many illegal sides to it; underaged smoking is at the highest ever with the introduction of electronic cigarettes. Smoking is seen in the world as ""normal"", but there is an underlying epidemic of nicotine addiction and abuse.

At a quick glance of this image, it seems like a normal cigarette advertisement with your usual ""Smoking Kills"" slogan on top. The focus is on the cigarette itself, as it is at almost takes up the entire photo. The angle of the cigarette is also important, as we can see what looks like bullets inside the cigarette paper. If the cigarette was shown at a horizontal angle facing away from us, we wouldn't have ever known there were bullets inside this cigarette.

The photo uses two very similary but different common items to portray one common message. There is a cigarette, and the cigarette is loaded with bullets. The advertisement persuades us not to smoke. The advertisement cleverly brings up a question in our mind; ""What happens if we smoke that cigarette?"" The answer is clear, when we light up that cigarette, the bullets will shoot inside us and cause our death. This is use of logos, the picture is clear in depicting you WILL die if you smoke that cigarette. The next time someone who sees this advertisement opens up another pack of cigarettes, they will remember this picture and think otherwise.

The intended audience for this advertisement is for both smokers and non-smokers. This will sway non-smokers from thinking about smoking, and for smokers it will make them think twice about smoking another cigarette. The advertisement also uses pathos to depict cigarettes. A bullet, something that is known to have killed millions of people, is put into the cigarette. This puts another perspective to cigarette use. Smokers will hopefully have a different feeling towards cigarettes the next time they light one up. The picture also uses ethics, that being the bullet in the cigarette. People behave quite scared when a bullet is mentioned, having that inside a cigarette will make smokers realize that tobacco can be as harmful as a bullet.

Critiques might say that this advertisement will not do anything to sway the opinions of smokers, but this advertisement is so much different than any other tobacco prevention ads. It puts emphasis that there is only two ways to this situation; either you smoke it and die or you leave it and live. Aliyana uses “Red Herring Fallacy”. She distracts the audience from “why smoking kills” but puts more emphasis on how it kills you.

Overall, this picture does a great job trying to divert smokers from smoking cigarettes. This advertisement will cause an emotionally appealing message; smoking is the same as taking a shot to the body. She takes the worthiness of cigarettes and puts it to shame, making cigarettes the equivalent to a gun with a loaded bullet. It’s just a plain white background with a cigarette and a common catch phrase for tobacco prevention advertisements, but there is so much more to this advertisement than to the normal eye.

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