Synopsis:

The Quit series of five programmes has been designed to raise awareness of a range of issues surrounding cigarette smoking and legal controls on the use of tobacco. Using personal testimonies, the audience is introduced to the impact smoking has on people’s health and lifestyle. Smokers and non-smokers alike discuss how addiction to cigarettes has influenced their lives or those of their families. The series also focuses on how tobacco companies use marketing and advertising techniques to influence people’s smoking behaviour.

Programme 4: A Breath of Fresh Air
Using interviews with representatives from the tobacco industry, this programme outlines marketing techniques used to sell cigarettes to consumers. It highlights the fact that tobacco companies aggressively market to teenagers in the hope of recruiting them as smokers, in order to create a new market to replace existing smokers who are dying of smoking-related diseases.

00.00 – 04.30
An old-style American commercial of a High School couple just about to light up. A voice says, ‘Wait’. Cuts to archive footage of US tobacco industry.

Representatives of the industry deny tobacco is addictive. A doctor endorses a US brand in an early advertisement. Alec has a hole in his throat as a result of smoking-related cancer. He regrets he once believed wholesome images.

A former industry chairman acknowledges the addictive nature of tobacco has created a prosperous industry and sees nothing wrong with this. A former marketing consultant says they can hardly say their product will kill people.

‘We don’t smoke this shit, we sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for people who are young, poor, black and stupid’ a former executive tells a ‘Winston Man’ whose brief is to get kids smoking.

Another tobacco executive says if you don’t sell to children you’ll have no customers in 25–30 years. A tobacco producer describes the growing world market. The young couple decide not to light up.