Thursday, November 11, 2010

FDA Learns From the Egyptian Ministry of Health

Egyptian anti-smoking ad 
In a move that proves the Egyptian leadership in everything , FDA is imitating our ministry of health and has decided to put on the cigarette pack horrible images to scare the people from that nasty habit !! This is what our official press will claim tomorrow !!
Seriously speaking I admire this move from the FDA and I hope it will meet success in the States especially with the influence of the tobacco companies in the country.  These horrible images on the packet technique is being used in countries like in UK and in the Gulf as far as I know besides Egypt. You see the images the FDA has chosen to scare American smokers at Gawker.
Egypt has been imposing these images on cigarette companies in Egypt since 2008 still I do not think that the campaign reached to any tangible results , what I see is that the number of the smokers in the country is increasing not decreasing !! The smokers in Egypt reached to nice trick to hide those horrible alarming images : To hide them.
There are cheap Chinese plastic covers for the cigarette packets that cover the horrible images and of course the silver cigarettes case have made a come back especially among the A Class in Egypt.
The campaign in Egypt includes 4 photos where the photo is changed every 6 months. The most famous two photos that caused a lot of buzz up till now have : The man on mechanical ventilation aka Hamdi Balala’s image and the controversial smoking effect on sex life for men aka impotence
Balala's iconic image
The ministry of health claims that Hamdi Balala’s image on mechanical ventilation has been the most effective one !! Well it was effective in turning the campaign in its early days in to joke indeed !! Mr. Balala smokes and does not give shit to the hazards of smoking and he was angry that he was given only LE 2000 when his photo was printed on millions of cigarette packets. His admirers or rather the smokers who hate the ministry of health’s new measures against smoking formed a Facebook group with the name “ Hamdi Balala’s ministry of health campiagn”. Balala has become a pop icon if you remember.
The smoking is bad on your sex life caused a little stir due to its direct reference sex in public life in this way , sex is our favorite taboo.
Smoking bad for your sex life
The ministry launched a new set of photos last September and that new set of photos are more shocking and some people think they are gross as they show oral cancer effects.
New ads
There is a  recent report in LA Times  Mideast affairs blog about the anti-smoking campaign in Egypt.
P.S I hate smoking and I know heavy smokers who died because of it including my father who died of lung cancer. 

5 comments:

  1. The first countries to add visual warnings were Sweden and Canada.. in fact that same image of the non-erectile fag/penis first appeared on Canadian packs
    http://farm1.static.flickr.com/160/370271808_dbfe647d93.jpg

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  2. Canada was the first country that introduced 'horrible' images on all tobacco packaging in 1998.
    Health Canada fought a long dirty battle with the tobacco companies in order to pass the bill in Parliament.
    US tobacco company lobbies has prevented the FDA from adopting the same law by Congress.

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  3. Canada was the first state in the world to adopt mandatory warning images in cigarette packages.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_packaging_warning_messages
    The Canadian.

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  4. @Zeinobia; I don't think that any campaign to convince smokers in Egypt to quit will be sucessful as long as we have people like the Egyptian minister of justice.

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  5. There has been some discussions in the EU about blank packets. The images arent effective, at least per those smoking in my social circle, sadly.

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