Cancer Council WA’s Make Smoking History relaunches memorable anti-tobacco campaign

Cancer Council WA’s Make Smoking History has relaunched one of Australia’s most memorable anti-tobacco campaigns, ‘Sponge’, in a bid to prompt people who smoke to quit for their respiratory health in the evolving COVID-19 pandemic.

Cancer Council WA’s Cancer Prevention and Research Manager, Melissa Ledger, said the campaign aims to get people thinking about the negative health effects each cigarette is having on their health, particularly their lungs, and to motivate people to stop smoking.

Ledger said: “We know that smoking can put you at greater risk of getting chest infections and influenza, and emerging evidence suggests that smoking can be a significant risk factor for more severe symptoms of COVID-19; this is largely because COVID-19 affects our lungs.

“In addition to respiratory health, smoking causes up to 16 cancer types, all of which increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission and adverse outcomes due to compromised immunity in patients.

“There is also evidence that if you have other health conditions like cardiovascular disease and cancer, you are more likely to experience severe complications of COVID-19, and smoking can increase the risk of many of these conditions.”

Ledger added anti-tobacco public education campaigns like ‘Sponge’ are a key component of a comprehensive approach to driving down smoking rates in WA.

“The highly successful ‘Sponge’ campaign first aired in WA in 2014 and then again in 2016 with evaluation indicating more than 50 per cent of smokers who saw the ad said it prompted them to discuss quitting with family, friends or work colleagues.”

“Although anti-tobacco campaigns have been around for a long time there is still work to be done and we have not given up on supporting people to stop smoking, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic continues throughout Australia, and the world.

“Quitting smoking has the potential to be life-changing, now more than ever. If you smoke, we urge you to use this time as incentive to stop once and for all.”

Prof. Fraser Brims, Respiratory Physician at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and Curtin Medical School, said studies suggest smokers who contract COVID-19 are 40 – 50% more likely to develop severe symptoms and die from the disease.

Brims said: “We see first-hand the damage caused by smoking and the devastation brought to family and friends left behind when a loved one dies due to smoking. And, more recently, we have been seeing the devastation from COVID-19.”

“We know that smokers are more likely to catch respiratory viruses, and people that have smoked for years may have physical damage in the lungs; together this makes it harder for your lungs to fight COVID-19 if you are a smoker.”

The commercial was created by John Bevins Advertising Sydney in 1983. The first airing at the time led to a skirmish between the Tobacco Institute of Australia and the NSW state government with the tobacco lobby unsuccessfully trying to have the campaign banned by the Advertising Standards Council.

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