How to write a dialog to convince a teenage to stop smoking?

Answer 1

The best way to convince anyone not to start smoking, or to convince a person who isn't a dedicated life-long smoker to stop, is to deglamorize the image of smoking.

Any number of health warnings or horrible images of the rotten things smoking can do to you are lost on teenagers and young adults, who mostly believe they are bulletproof and immortal.

Pointing out how much of their money is going up in smoke doesn't make a lot of impact, since most people believe, deep down, that tomorrow they'll somehow get rich.

To learn how to convince people not to smoke, you need to look at how the tobacco companies convince people they should smoke. They do it by glamorizing tobacco use. They can't say it's good for you, or saves you money, or helps the economy or the environment: image is all that's left.

So, the tobacco industry goes all out to convince us that smoking makes us look cool, sophisticated, like someone who's made it or is well on their way. A secondary approach is to suggest smoking is relaxing, sociable and enjoyable.

Prevented by law in many places to directly advertise, wherever possible the tobacco industry spends a great deal of money on 'placement' of tobacco products. This means we see cool characters lighting up in movies and on television. Sporting and other major events, where it can be arranged, have somewhere in the background some kind of visual promotion of tobacco products. Top athletes and other role models are frequently 'accidentally' photographed having a sneaky cigarette somewhere.

That's an image the tobacco industry like: the famous person saying, I don't care what Mom tells me to do, I'm all grown up and independent and I do my own thing. And then sneaking off to have that naughty smoke. That anyone with any sense would think they want that image for themselves to prove they're all grown up and make their own decisions is a weird thought, but it works.

Advertising tobacco was once highly brand-oriented and competition between brands was fierce. Today in developed countries tobacco advertising has switched to continual promotion of smokers as presenting an attractive image, an image we should aspire to, irrespective of the brand smoked. Brands are still promoted, but more subtly than in the past.

A few decades ago a really fantastic advertising campaign was launched in the US. Featuring a teenage Brooke Shields - the then epitome of healthy, attractive, and above all, super-cool American youth - one advertisement in the series had Brooke looking fantastic, sitting next to a slightly desperate-looking, would-be-cool, teenage boy trying to look nonchalant as he strove to impress this beautiful girl.

And as he puffed away on his so-cool cigarette, Brooke's sideways glance remained on him, a look of faint disgust on her lovely face, while her voice, inaudible to the boy, described the way she felt about smokers. They stink, she said, and their breath is bad, and they cough disgustingly...

This series of commercials effectively deglamorized the whole image of smoking. They made smokers and their friends look the habit squarely in the face and realize there was nothing - nothing at all - in favour of smoking. They did stink; their breath did smell bad; and many of them wished they could give up, wished they'd never, ever started, but wouldn't admit it for fear their friends would think them uncool.

The campaign was expected to have a huge effect upon young people just beginning to smoke, and there's no doubt it would have been phenomenally successful. We know this, because it terrified the socks off the tobacco industry; the hugely powerful tobacco lobby threw all its resources behind desperate efforts to stop the campaign going to air, and with their enormous political pull in the US, succeeded. The campaign was pulled.

When proof began to emerge that tobacco was really bad for people, the industry poured billions into trying to prevent publication of these findings, and then to disprove or discredit them. It happened all over again when passive smoking became an issue. Today, the tobacco industry doesn't care too much about anti-smoking campaigns which focus on health issues because they're well aware they don't work very well.

They're far more worried about legislation preventing them from advertising, in media and in subtle campaigns which aren't quite seen as advertising. They panic every time a country bans smoking in various public areas, and encourage pubs, bars, restaurants and so on to protest these laws on the grounds they'll go out of business and it'll all cost jobs. It doesn't happen that way, of course, but still they try.

They're scared to death a lack of media focus on their products makes it easier for anti-tobacco campaigns to promote images designed to make people stop and think why they really want to smoke, whether they really look cool and sophisticated and reallyfeel relaxed and sociable, or whether they're just basically smelly, cough disgustingly, and get puffed out more easily than they used to.

So that's the approach to use if you want to convince a teenager to stop smoking: deglamorize it.

There's no point making a direct attack. It's better to simply note the main reasons people smoke, and allow people to see how silly these reasons are, how easily they're being led by people making billions of dollars out of encouraging others to do things which are a best a huge pointless waste of money and at worst, deadly.

One way to approach a dialogue might be to put the question: Why do people smoke? and list possible responses, with answers to those responses; for example:

· I smoke because it makes me appear sophisticated, cool.

No, you smoke because when you see someone smoking you think they look sophisticated and cool; you believe if you smoke, too, you'll look sophisticated and cool, too.

· I smoke because it gives me something to do with my hands in social settings.

No, you smoke because you see others waving cigarettes about in social settings and you think it looks smart.

· I smoke because I enjoy it.

Oh, yeah? How much effort did it take for you to enjoy it? How many tries before you could light up in public without spluttering, choking or gagging? And how long after that did you discover you no longer wanted to smoke, you needed to?

· I smoke because it's a decision I made, on my own, about my own choice of lifestyle.

No, you smoke because someone who knows how bad it is for you spent a lot of money to get you to make that decision.

· I smoke because it's an easy, relaxing way to take a break.

No, you take a break to smoke because you feel bad if you don't You need that cigarette.

· I smoke because...

You first smoked because you worked at learning to like it for really dumb reasons, and now you smoke because YOU CAN'T QUIT.

Or think you can't.

You believe you can't quit because there's so much publicity out there to convince you it's just too hard to quit. All that stuff about patches and gum and getting the jitters…you believe it all.

The best way not to smoke is never to start, but if it's too late for that, the next best is to look at what's left in your pack of cigarettes and tell yourself you're a non-smoker. Switch your mental view of yourself right around and take control. Tell yourself you have to smoke one of these cigarettes each day at a certain time, and when they're all gone you can toss out the empty pack and celebrate being a non-smoker again.

See yourself as a non-smoker, not as a deprived smoker. Deprived smokers crave cigarettes; non-smokers wonder why anyone would spend all that money just to be smelly and unhealthy.

You can quit all by yourself, but not everyone succeeds that way. If you need chemical or medical help, or other support, then take it; that's what it's there for.

But get control. Don't let people who don't care anything about you make money from encouraging you to do what's bad for you.