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UK: pulling the polonium ad

d.simpson@iath.org

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

As news that Russian former secret agent Alexander Litvinenko had been poisoned with polonium 210 swept round the world in November, many great minds in public health thought alike. Why not build on publicity about this dangerous element to tell smokers that polonium 210 is one of the many and various poisons they inhale with every puff of their cigarettes?

As it happened, Cancer Research UK, as part of a health promotion partnership with the British government, had just been working on a mass media campaign about tobacco featuring six chemicals that most smokers have heard of, and would rate as poisons, but may not know to be present in tobacco smoke. The idea of the radio and television advertisements, and small but high visibility posters, was to trigger a move towards giving up smoking, or at least help smokers to the first stage of the cessation loop. One of . . . [Full text of this article]