FDA Learns From the Egyptian Ministry of Health

Egyptian anti-smoking ad 

In a move that proves the Egyptian leadership in everything , FDA is imitating our ministry of health and has decided to put on the cigarette pack horrible images to scare the people from that nasty habit !! This is what our official press will claim tomorrow !!
Seriously speaking I admire this move from the FDA and I hope it will meet success in the States especially with the influence of the tobacco companies in the country.  These horrible images on the packet technique is being used in countries like in UK and in the Gulf as far as I know besides Egypt. You see the images the FDA has chosen to scare American smokers at Gawker.
Egypt has been imposing these images on cigarette companies in Egypt since 2008 still I do not think that the campaign reached to any tangible results , what I see is that the number of the smokers in the country is increasing not decreasing !! The smokers in Egypt reached to nice trick to hide those horrible alarming images : To hide them.
There are cheap Chinese plastic covers for the cigarette packets that cover the horrible images and of course the silver cigarettes case have made a come back especially among the A Class in Egypt.
The campaign in Egypt includes 4 photos where the photo is changed every 6 months. The most famous two photos that caused a lot of buzz up till now have : The man on mechanical ventilation aka Hamdi Balala’s image and the controversial smoking effect on sex life for men aka impotence

Balala's iconic image

The ministry of health claims that Hamdi Balala’s image on mechanical ventilation has been the most effective one !! Well it was effective in turning the campaign in its early days in to joke indeed !! Mr. Balala smokes and does not give shit to the hazards of smoking and he was angry that he was given only LE 2000 when his photo was printed on millions of cigarette packets. His admirers or rather the smokers who hate the ministry of health’s new measures against smoking formed a Facebook group with the name “ Hamdi Balala’s ministry of health campiagn”. Balala has become a pop icon if you remember.
The smoking is bad on your sex life caused a little stir due to its direct reference sex in public life in this way , sex is our favorite taboo.

Smoking bad for your sex life

The ministry launched a new set of photos last September and that new set of photos are more shocking and some people think they are gross as they show oral cancer effects.

New ads

There is a  recent report in LA Times  Mideast affairs blog about the anti-smoking campaign in Egypt.
P.S I hate smoking and I know heavy smokers who died because of it including my father who died of lung cancer. 

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