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Comment by nobleach | Hacker News Reader

Show them a Quentin Tarantino film? ...or any film for that matter where the main characters seem so "cool, unfazed and untouchable". To a young (mostly male) mind, that's the ultimate goal; to be in charge. For most beginning smokers, it's not about the inhalation of tobacco, but the subversive "screw the rules, those don't apply to me" façade. This might sound obvious but, if we want 7th graders not to glorify smoking, we quit glorifying it in our media. Make the stupid guy in the movie the one that's dumb enough to smoke. Make everyone laugh at him every time he tries to look cool.

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This has been tried before. In Waterworld, the bad guys are literally called the "Smokers" and smoking is a big part of their culture. It's so over the top it seems more like a parody of anti-smoking campaigns. I doubt it ever convinced anybody not to smoke, and I think any similar attempt is doomed to fail in the same way. Kids are good at detecting when you're trying to manipulate them, and it doesn't matter if you have good intentions.

I thought it referred to the smoke from their engines? They were the only ones in that world who used internal combustion engines?

It's kind of both. For some strange reason I watched that movie again recently. I guess they were supposed to be the distilled version of whatever was considered bad in society in the 90s: hyper-masculinity, smoking, oil tankers, guns, religion (they went on "crusades", the leader was "The Deacon") etc.

Aren't all these things ± still what's considered bad in 2024?

Pretty much. But the giant oil tanker full of "meanies" was a nod to Exxon Valdez which was fresh in memory then.

Yeah I think I’ve seen that movie three or four times and I never made the connection between the name and smoking cigarettes. Figured it was all the oil they had, and engines they could run with it.

The only thing I remember is they made some old dude row around the oil tank on a tiny boat because they had apparently forgotten how fuel gauges and dip sticks work.

Thinking back on it, were they powering their pirate jetskis with heavy crude? Was there a distillation column set up on the oil tanker? I probably shouldn't think too hard about Wet Mad Max because I bet a lot of that movie doesn't really make sense on closer inspection.

Yeah the lack of a refinery does seem like a problem. Maybe they were making something close-enough to diesel out of it with some crude process? No way they were making gasoline, nor most other petroleum fuels.

Kids want to do what they see, if they see people smoke, they want to smoke. If mommy and daddy drink coffee in the morning, it doesn't matter that it tastes like ass, a literal 3-year-old will just by sheer force of will drink that bitter nectar just to feel like they belong.

> If mommy and daddy drink coffee in the morning, it doesn't matter that it tastes like ass, a literal 3-year-old will just by sheer force of will drink that bitter nectar just to feel like they belong

Then I must be quite different from that "literal 3 year old". Mom and Dad both drank coffee, and around the 3-year point I did want to try it, for the reason you say, because it was something "they" were doing. And, yes, that sip did taste like ass. So much like ass that to this day 54 years later, I do not and will not drink coffee.

Most adults claim that they're not influenced by advertising, yet studies show they are. I'm quite confident the same effect would be found in teens.

Negative advertising and positive advertising are quite different.

I'm definitely affected by both, but generally if I feel I'm being nannied my instinct is to go the other way. People don't need to be "convinced" to do things that are good for them - if they're not doing it, they likely just have reasons that you don't understand.

> Show them a Quentin Tarantino film?

Mia's OD scene in Pulp Fiction definitely scared me away from drugs

even though I wasn't supposed to be old enough to see it >_>

Same. That scene stuck with me.

Makes me wonder if over-protecting children from negative feelings backfires. Pulp Fiction was a risk-free and simple way to make vivid the risks of heroin.

I would put Pulp Fiction near the top of the list for "films with surprisingly wholesome moral examples". The overdose, Butch coming back to help Marcellus and their subsequent parting ways, Jules' acknowledgement that he's "buying" not "giving"... to top it off, nobody is trying to moralize or patronize the viewer. Jules was getting close enough to agitate Vince but that just strengthens the film; it's okay to feel Vince's side more and not feel what someone else does despite witnessing the same thing. I was probably late teens when I first saw it but pretty sure if I saw it as a kid that I'd have gotten the good with the bad.

> over-protecting children from negative feelings backfires

it definitely hit differently to "see it myself", versus having it introduced by a parent/guardian, who probably would shy away from making the lesson so graphic

Trainspotting should be mandatory watching in schools.

The ultimate thing that convinced me not to smoke was watching my uncle die of lung cancer, and being unable to quit the thing that was killing him.

I'm somewhat relieved that tobacco references are considered "adult" now in entertainment. The amount of smoking I saw in movies and TV (and around my uncle) normalized it for me, even though I knew how unhealthy it was.

For my high school cohort the video interview of the person still smoking after having had a laryngectomy really drove home the powerlessness of addiction.

The problem is seeing all that... And then seeing family members and friends smoke on the weekend... It puts it in this weird "safe to try, but not safe to keep doing" slot.

Nicotine addiction is very subtle, for many it's hard to recognize until you're hooked.

We had a guy who had one come to our school in person; giving his talk whilst smoking from his stoma was ... pretty convincing, to be honest.

I remember that ad. I think it did it for me as well.

Rather than uncool, just kill them. In british historical drama there is an old standard that any character that coughs will soon die. If the butler even sniffles, they are doomed. So make smoking the new coughing. The kids will then associated smoking with death, living in fear every time their favorite characters go anywhere near cigarettes.

> In british historical drama there is an old standard that any character that coughs will soon die.

That reminds me of the classic short-film subversion of this trope: The Man Who Has a Cough and it's Just a Cough and He's Fine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtQNULEudss&t=67s

Requiem for a dream still haunts me.

As a non-smoker, I’ve never felt like I needed a cigarette more than when the credits rolled on Requiem. Certainly scared me off of harder drugs, though.

Yup, that’s the real anti-drug movie. Stuff like this works. It’s not pleasant though.

Just when I finally almost forgot about it, this comment rips it back into my poor brain.

And now, if it hasn't already been playing in your head, Clint Mansell's "Summer Overture" will now haunt you. ;)

His worst film I thought, almost an Aronofsky pastiche.

It is remarkable how dramatically smoking was intentionally removed from even period movies, and in some cases edited out of old content.

Perhaps silence works better than negative mention? There's a real problem with anti-war or anti-violence media accidentally making it look cool, similarly with biographies of "troubled star" types detailing their drug uses.

> This might sound obvious but, if we want 7th graders not to glorify smoking, we quit glorifying it in our media

There was quite obviously a concerted effort to remove smoking from movies and shows. It's been going on for more than a decade. It's quite abrupt, go back far enough and everyone smokes, especially the cool guys and gals. Then fast forward and almost nobody smokes, not even the villains. Ads for smoking are gone from my country's TV and cigarette packs by law must display horrifying photos of emaciated cancer patients.

Media is part of it, but seeing the real life adults in your life smoke influences you a lot. It’s not necessarily about emulating people you admire, it’s about adopting a signifier of adulthood.

Exactly, these are the kinds of ads we need:

https://www.advocate.com/news/daily-news/2010/02/25/anti-smo...

I was thinking more like this https://www.theonion.com/new-anti-smoking-ads-warn-teens-its...

But that one is not bad either :)

Got a good laugh out of me, thanks for sharing!

For me, the older kids doing cool things were smoking.

A bunch of actors smoking never did anything for me.

Smoking by most teenagers is easy to solve: Make all cigarettes hot pink with garish other colors in ugly, ugly patterns. Teenagers don't like looking conspicuously ridiculous.

Finally get to use this anecdote...

    Friend: Do you have anything that doesn't taste like middle school girl lip gloss?
    Gas station attendant: *chuckles* No, sorry.
    Friend: Fine, cherry-berry then.

I don't think it works.

Vaping already looks conspicuously ridiculous. Nobody ever looked cool vaping.

"Douche Flute."

Trainspotting. Those scenes are burned in my memory forever.

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