World Lung Foundation Marks World No Tobacco Day With New Counter-Marketing and Advertising Campaigns

‘Giving Cigarettes Is Giving Harm,’ an ad WLF supported in China, addresses the cultural behavior of giving cigarettes as gifts

On World No Tobacco Day, World Lung Foundation is partnering with government health ministries in China and India to launch new tobacco counter‐marketing campaigns in those countries, where the largest populations of smokers in the world reside. WLF also completed an online video for the World Health Organization, which will be disseminated globally.

• In Tianjin, China, WLF is launching a campaign called ‘I Participate In Smoke Free Places’ more >>
• In Yunnan province , WLF and Yunnan Health Education Institute are launching a campaign with two TV and mobile media ads and 30,000 posters that graphically depict the personal harms of smoking.more >>
• WLF is also working with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the World Health Organization in India on the launch of a national TV and radio advertising campaign using the ‘Sponge’ concept. more >>
• In Russia, WLF will be presenting on mass media strategies at the 2nd All Russian Forum “Health or Tobacco” in Moscow and the 5th All Russian Conference “Doctors against Tobacco” in YaroslavlWLF has been running regional campaigns in Samara, Krasnoyarsk and Chuvashia this month.
• WLF also developed an online video for the World Health Organization that counters the tobacco industry’s assertion that cigarettes are cool. more >>

“World No Tobacco Day is a moment to highlight the global tobacco epidemic to policy makers, the health community and citizens around the world,” said Peter Baldini, Chief Executive Officer, World Lung Foundation. “WLF emphasizes such communication through strong, visceral images that show what tobacco really does to people.”

Tobacco use is the leading preventable agent of death in the world today, and is responsible for more than five million deaths each year – one in ten adults worldwide. Within 25 years the death toll from tobacco will climb to more than eight million people per year, and it is estimated that half of all people who smoke today will eventually be killed by the direct or indirect effects of tobacco.