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Giving Cigarettes is Giving Harm

Also: GCGH

Chinese mass media campaign by China CDC, World Lung Foundation (now Vital Strategies) and WHO that challenged the custom of giving cigarettes as gifts, especially around Chinese New Year. It first aired nationally from December 2008 to February 2009 and has been rerun since.

Years
2008–now
Country
China
Topic
Tobacco
Asks people to
StopSupport a policy
Strategy
Fear appealSocial norms
Channel
TV
Audience
Adults

Evidence

Quasi-experimentalPositive

ITC China cohort of 3,709 smokers in six cities (Huang 2015): 14% recalled the campaign. Those who recalled it were more likely to disagree that cigarettes are good gifts (71% vs 58%), and disagreement was higher in campaign cities than control cities. Knowledge gains were similar in both.

Sponsor (who paid)

  • Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Foreign government, co-creator
  • World Lung Foundation (now Vital Strategies) NGO, co-creator
  • World Health Organization Multilateral, partner

Credits (who made it)

Not recorded yet.

Sources

  1. Huang LL et al. Impact of the 'Giving Cigarettes is Giving Harm' campaign on knowledge and attitudes of Chinese smokers. Tob Control 2015;24 Suppl 4(0 4):iv28-34 evaluation · 2015 · DOI 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2013-051475 · PMID 24813427
  2. Qin Y et al. Effectiveness of a Television Advertisement Campaign on Giving Cigarettes in a Chinese Population. J Epidemiol 2014 evaluation · 2014 · DOI 10.2188/jea.je20130172 · PMID 25196169

Research notes

Created 2026-10-22 by literature mining (PubMed/OpenAlex); evidence level, outcome and findings are paraphrased from the evaluation abstracts, full texts not read. No credits: no page naming an agency was checked. Sponsors and dates from search-result snippets of vitalstrategies.org (pages not opened); which wave the ITC evaluation covers is not stated in the abstract. Qin 2014 added 2026-10-22 (openalex-deep queue; DOI checked on Crossref and PMID via NCBI esummary 2026-10-22): 36.0% recalled the ad; those who saw it were more likely not to give cigarettes (38.7% vs 27.5%). Cross-sectional; evidence unchanged.

Record cases/cn-giving-cigarettes-is-giving-harm.json, updated 2026-10-22· Link to this campaign