Utah's anti-smoking efforts are moving from real life to cartoons to get the "cigarettes are bad" message across.
Along with a campaign of testimonials from former smokers cheering themselves for quitting is a new series of animated television commercials urging kids to never start — starring two vultures.
Two 30-second, black-and-white ads feature the pair, who in one are offering free cigarettes and in another dine on the carrion of a teenager who survives a near-hit by a truck on a desert highway only to cough himself to death after a celebratory puff on a cigarette.
"Tastes a little like chicken," one buzzard says to the other.
The ads end with the tagline, "Smoking. It's a dangerous road," and a smoking skull on a diamond-shaped traffic caution sign.
The ads also take a swipe at the tobacco companies that passed out free cigarettes to young adults this summer, ostensibly to find out what young people were doing to try to quit or to get them to change brands.
In California, R.J. Reynolds tobacco company was fined $20 million for pitching cigarettes to teens in youth-oriented magazines. A judge ruled that the company violated the landmark 1998 settlement with 46 states that barred "Big Tobacco" from taking "any action, directly or indirectly, to target youth."
Animating the message is not only directed at cartoon-watching kids, it is also running during the holiday break when they're likely to spend more time watching TV, said health department spokeswoman Jana Kettering.
This is the first time the department has specifically targeted children under 8 years old with mass-media messages, Kettering said. "In addition, this is the first time we have ever used animation for our prevention messages. It was time to break some new ground in our prevention efforts."
Although Utah maintains the lowest per capita smoking rate in the country, the state is like others in the number of teens who take up smoking, according to a new health department report to be released next month.
Children begin smoking at an average age of 12 years, said Lena Dibble, speaking for the department's Tobacco Prevention and Control Program.
"The sooner we can reach those kids, the more successful we will be in preventing them from using tobacco later in life," she said. "This is a fun way to get a very serious message across."
Overall, smoking among Utahns has decreased slightly the past year, according to the report. About 13 percent, or 185,000 Utahns, smoke. The national smoking rate is 23 percent, although it is declining as well.
More ads featuring the vultures will begin airing in February.
In an effort to show that cigarette smoking can be overcome, the state Department of Health has been running another truth-about-tobacco campaign featuring real Utah adults who quit and how they did it. That effort is linked to a new Web site, ididit.tv, where Utahns can log on, submit photos and tell stories of how they quit smoking.
The department hopes the new campaign, along with the Utah Tobacco Quit Line telephone number (1-888-567-8788), will give people who are trying to quit the inspiration to stick with it by seeing the stories of fellow ex-smokers.
A reality-based TV campaign and an eight-week smoking cessation program were the past two efforts the department has made to reduce the ranks of the nearly 200,000 adults who smoke cigarettes in Utah. The health department reports about 400,000 people nationwide die each year of diseases caused by the addiction.
E-mail: jthalman@desnews.com