Anti-Smoking, ’60s Style

If you run a workplace with a vigorously anti-smoking or health-promoting policy, you may want to consider this fun bit of history as encouragement to employees instead of duller modern variants of the anti-smoking poster. Yes, believe it or not, a few people in the 1960s were aware that smoking could have a downside. But interestingly, this 1966 poster makes a very pragmatic argument to incentivise giving up smoking: quit and you’ll be better off and then you can buy yourself more fun things. (Though note the rock-bottom prices for an annual habit which really date the poster – it almost costs those amounts a week now).

It is worth wondering whether this sort of positive incitement (quitting = money) might be more effective than very real but rather denial-inducing gory pictorial portents of the risks.

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No Smoking signs