IT’S enough to make me take up smoking again.
You see the ads every morning on NY1, airing as regularly as a cigarette addict needs a fix.
The anti-tobacco ads put out by the city Health Department are as grotesque as open-heart surgery performed without anesthesia.
There’s video of a beating, diseased heart. It’s followed by an image of discolored lungs. There’s a mouth eaten away by disease. And a throat with a purplish tumor growing from it.
I get it. Smoking is bad.
But this is sick.
For the last few months, Health Commissioner and chief nanny Dr. Thomas Frieden has ratcheted up an anti-smoking blitz to the point of nausea.
One morning, as one of the commercials came on, my gaze fell on the 9-year-old with whom I share my world. She tried to hide under the sofa.
I can explain to my kid why people simply should not smoke. But this campaign goes too far.
A check of parents assures me I’m not alone.
Anne Townsend, a Brooklyn mother, clicked on the tube to catch up on Spitzer.
As she watched, horrified, her girls, 3 and 7, mutely stared at the set, terrified.
“I had to explain to them that I think smoking is terrible,” said Townsend. “And yet I don’t want them to think that their friends are going to have these horrible things happen to them.”
Beth, mother of kids, 4 and 8 years old, said, “I think it’s horrifying!
“No one thinks everyone should go out and smoke, but the message is lost.
“To a child, it’s the picture of a monster.”
Sarah Perl, assistant commissioner of tobacco control, told me that since Feb. 25 the ads have logged just seven complaints, while hot-line calls from smokers who aim to quit have jumped 400 percent.
These ads are set to run through the end of the month.
A news broadcast would not post pictures of medical atrocities without warning. But these X-rated ads run without a rating.
The Health Department needs to toss them out with the Marlboro Man.