The aggressiveness of the media campaign has been for the express purpose of proving that the ad campaign can have some sort of impact. Ultimately, the brash media campaign seems to be less about health education and more about eliciting a supportive response from politicians. The campaign is not being evaluated for whether or not it prevents youth from smoking or encourages adult smokers to quit. After all, the department of health knows that media campaigns aren't the best way to reduce smoking. Unfortunately, rather than following its own advice, the department of health is spending less money on community programs than on the media campaign.
Politicians prefer that their mainstream constituents see where public money is going.
It doesn't matter if the program is effective. We wanted to create that quickly, so when we went back to the legislature we could demonstrate some outcomes. Ric Kasini Kadour is the program director at Gay City, an HIV-prevention group that relies on state money to run a program that combats smoking among gays and lesbians.