WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — A beloved young niece’s admiration of a surgical scar persuaded a Southern California woman to become the grotesque poster child of an anti-smoking campaign.
And now she’s back.
The 1997 video of Debi Austin taking a drag on a cigarette through the hole in her throat where her cancerous larynx and vocal chords had been removed was the first real-life advertisement that brought home the threat of nicotine addiction.
Austin had rebuffed anti- smoking advocates’ pleas that she participate in the campaign, but the turning point came when her niece drew a black dot on her own neck, mimicking the tracheotomy.
“I want to be like you,” she told her aunt.
“I called them right after that,” Austin said.
The iconic public service announcement branded an entire generation of would-be smokers with the startling image and hammered home the addictive nature of nicotine.
California officials announced last week that they are bringing back Austin — now 60, smoke-free and a tobacco educator — for another round of anti-smoking public service announcements.
“It’s like, ‘Duh?!’ ” said Austin in a phone interview, pausing occasionally to sip water because radiation destroyed most of her saliva glands. “Of course I’ll do it. It’s really such an honor.”
Austin’s health has continued to decline since her first commercial in 1997. She had breast cancer surgery. Doctors removed 15 feet of intestine after finding a cancerous mass. She has emphysema, walks with a cane and stores emergency inhalers every 4 feet in her house. She is battling stomach cancer.
“The worse I look, the more impact I have on my audience,” she said in her raspy voice. “If I walked in with a scarf over my neck, it wouldn’t send home nearly the impact than if they saw it.” “It” is a tracheotomy hole surgeons cut when they removed her larynx in 1992, the result of smoking as many as three packs a day since she was 13. She had to learn esophageal speech or “burp talk.”
Despite the surgery, Austin continued to smoke and anti- smoking advocates began courting her to dramatize their cause. The University of California at Berkeley political science graduate initially balked, embarrassed at her failure to control her habit.
“I told (them), ‘Every day I would look in the mirror and face what I had done, and you want me to tell the entire state?! Go to hell!’ ” she said.
Her niece changed her mind — and her life.
“I never imagined how my whole world would change because of a 30-second public- service announcement,” Austin said.
The ad ran on her 47th birthday. About eight months later, she had quit her smoking habit.
The original ad’s shock value made it powerful. “It had always been kind of wishy- washy before, and this was down-and-dirty, take your breath away. It gave you a moment to think.”
If a woman could go to these lengths to smoke, the viewers could begin to understand tobacco’s addictive nature, said California’s director of public health. “There’s no question in my mind that it certainly contributed to the campaign over time,” Dr. Mark Horton said. “And now, the new ads . . . will reinvigorate the campaign.”
In one new ad, a young girl preens in front of a mirror, pretending to smoke a cigarette. A computer-generated tracheotomy hole appears on her neck and the commercial fades into Austin telling her story, accentuating her labored breathing and speech.
Since the original commercial, Austin has traveled the world to share her story.
Three years ago, she worked with the Oakland school district and Alameda County Medical Center on an anti-tobacco education project.
