Anti-smoke lobby has new solution to old problem

YES, smoking is bad for you. Everyone knows this. Even smokers. Especially smokers. After all, we're the ones who have to stop for a breather after walking out to get the mail. We're the ones who can't feel our toes due to bad circulation even when the weather's downright balmy. We're the ones who wake up every morning and cough up small pieces of blackened lungs through our yellowing teeth and nicotine-stained fingers. You don't need to tell smokers that smoking is bad for them. We know.But people love pointing out that smoking kills . They like to believe they're doing you a favour by passing on a little health warning to you; pointing out the bleeding obvious as you suck down another cancer stick. Unfortunately, you don't see those same do-gooders going up to fat people outside KFC or McDonald's and saying "I think you should quit before that stuff kills you". Smoking has been replaced as Public Health Enemy Number One by the Obesity Epidemic, yet people still helpfully inform us smokers that "smoking's bad for you" when we light up. But they don't say anything like that to obese people when they chow down. Why not?I hate it when people try to inform me of how bad smoking is for me. I know it's bad for me."You know those things give you cancer," they say. "Those things will kill you."This is true. But I don't need to be told . I know already. My favourite retort is paraphrasing a line from the greatest American comedian who ever lived, Bill Hicks: "Yeah, but you know what? Non-smokers die every day."Hicks used to do a lot of material about smoking. He's dead now. He died of pancreatic cancer aged 32. So why do smokers smoke? In the face of irrefutable evidence and imminent death, why do we continue to light up?It's partly because we enjoy it. We're like any drug user, whether your drug of choice be nicotine, alcohol, or one of the dozens of illegal ones. We know they are bad for us, but we take these things because we enjoy the way they make us feel. But mostly, it's because we're addicted. Lots of people want to help us smokers stop smoking ? quit campaigns, hypnotists, doctors, cigarette-replacement product salespeople.Even the government has been trying to dissuade smokers by putting grotesque pictures on cigarette packaging, continually increasing the amount of tax paid on each pack, and limiting the number of places people can light up.But you can't help but think that if the government was serious about stopping people from smoking, it would ban tobacco. The cynic in me believes the government actually wants people to smoke so it can continue taking our money to fill its coffers. (No pun intended.)The latest method to help smokers help themselves can be seen in the pictures on this page. Canadian company Aprilage Development Inc. has created a piece of software called April which will calculate what you will look if you continue smoking until the age of 72. The photos on this page are April's projections for your correspondent. And if I didn't look hideous in the current photo, I certainly do in the "after" photo.A study done by Galaxy Research on behalf of Pfizer Australia suggested that 73 per cent of Australian smokers would be likely to contemplate trying to quit if they were able to see the damage that they would do to their face if they continued smoking.Dr Raymond Seidler, a general practitioner and addiction specialist involved in the Australia-wide study, said smoking had such an effect on a person's skin that it was sometimes possible to identify a smoker just by looking at their face."Smoking reduces the skin's ability to regenerate, slows the rate at which wounds heal and increases the chances of scarring," Dr Seidler said."As a result of smoking, the skin on a person's face may take on a dry, tough and leathery appearance. "A blotchy, slightly reddened, orange and purple complexion may also occur because of inadequate oxygenation of the blood."On other occasions, a smoker's complexion may develop a grey, unnatural tone because it is wasting away due to the effects of nicotine decreasing blood flow by constricting blood vessels which are essential for healthy skin."Dr Seidler said people were often aware of the internal damage they were doing but ageing programs such as April may provide a more immediate and confronting message."Imaging technology such as the software being applied here could be a powerful tool in allowing smokers to visualise what a lifetime of smoking damage looks like and then to take steps to get help in making a quit attempt," he said.But will showing people the ugly face of smoking have an effect? And have previous methods to curb smoking, including graphic advertising, pub bans and price jumps, done anything? Are smokers a dying breed (pun intended)?According to the Quit Victoria website, the percentage of Australians who smoke has fallen in the past 20 years from 28 per cent of the population to 19 per cent.However, an industry source in the south-west disagrees."When we (started selling cigarettes roughly two decades ago) we started taking records of how many people we were selling cigarettes to in a day," the source said."Those figures are still pretty much the same."In those days, a pack of Peter Jackson 30s cost about $3.60. Now it's somewhere close to $13."And that's pretty much all tax," he said.The source said that when cigarettes jumped in price massively about 10 years ago, thanks to a new federal tax on smokes plus the GST, two things happened."Illegal tobacco, called chop chop, became available and it also created a black market... in counterfeit tailor-made cigarettes. You could look at the packaging and smoke the smoke and it was almost impossible to tell the difference."The source is convinced people will always smoke and that it's better to regulate cigarettes rather than ban them."You just have to look at the prohibition of alcohol in the US (from 1920-1933) for a great parity."And we all know how well that worked.So what's the message here? Maybe things like pictures of blackened lungs or wizened faces will convince some people to stop smoking. Maybe it won't.But at the end of the day, if people want to quit they will, and there are people out there to help.* If you want to stop smoking, call the Quit hotline on 13 78 48.