Can a sheet of glossy paper alone help you quit smoking? Yes, if it appears in a magazine and advertises a gum, pill, patch or device designed to help smokers kick the tobacco habit.
Just seeing magazine ads for smoking-cessation products appears to make cigarette smokers more likely to try quitting – and to succeed in doing so – even if the consumers viewing the ads don’t go out and buy the products, a study has found.
Alan Mathios, a professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University, writes in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy that the ads appear to have important “spillover effects,” possibly reinforcing the anti-smoking message of public health officials and then stiffening the resolve of those who continue to see the ads in magazines after they’ve quit.
