Media and Tobacco: how they get the message across!
Answers
The mass media have played an important role in efforts to control and prevent tobacco use. To recognize the effectiveness of these efforts, the theme of the seventh World No-Tobacco Day, to be held May 31, 1994, is "The Media and Tobacco: Getting the Health Message Across." Activities will include press releases, videotape presentations, educational symposia, and radio announcements by World Health Organization experts on tobacco control.
The need for collaboration between public health workers and media representatives is particularly urgent in developing countries in which the prevalence of tobacco use is increasing. In these countries, the dissemination of information through the media also can assist in the development of educational and legislative measures to prevent and control tobacco use (1,2) and may help reduce the success of aggressive marketing campaigns by transnational tobacco companies. Examples of collaboration between the media and the tobacco-control groups in some countries include successful smoking-cessation and health-education campaigns (e.g., in Estonia, Finland, and New Guinea) and decisions by certain media to refuse cigarette advertising (e.g., in Australia, Canada, and the United States).