A story in The Independent has suggested that China could show the rest of the world how to do anti-tobacco campaigns.
The newspaper made the point that smoking was still an ever present habit despite numerous campaigns such as public smoking bans.
And it cited the differences of opinion currently being aired in the UK over the proposed introduction of standardized cigarette and fine-cut tobacco packaging.
But the writer was clearly horrified and impressed in equal measure at a video aired on the Chinese television channel CCTV last week.
The video apparently showed a series of images of damaged lungs, ‘highlighting the long-term damage smokers and passive smokers face from tobacco smoke’.
‘One particularly frightening sight shows a pair of lungs with black spots dotted all over them, almost like they are covered in tiny chocolate chips, a grim reminder of the horrible effect of the habit,’ the writer said. ‘It certainly puts many of the health warning images that adorn cigarette packages in the UK to shame: the abnormal look of one’s lungs is sure to be more effective than a picture of a sagging cigarette representing the danger of impotence.’
It wasn’t mentioned in the story whether the writer was a smoker or a non-smoker, a factor that would have affected her or his reaction to the images.