Teen anti-smoking ads starting to backfire

Just when you think you're doing something right, it starts to work in reverse. That is precisely what is happening in the effort to curb teenage smoking, as advertising in that arena is no longer being the effective deterrent it once was.

In what appears to be a perfect example of standard reverse psychology, the best way to convince a teenager that smoking is a great idea is to tell them that his/her parents don't want their children smoking. Seems too obvious, but it's true.

This comes from a recent study of teens who had watched tobacco-industry-funded television ads urging parents to talk to their children about smoking -- but the ads apparently had the opposite effect in many cases. The study shows that teens exposed to this type of advertising were more likely to have smoked in the past month and more likely to say that they planned to smoke in the future.