Spokane Man Stars In Anti-Smoking Ads

Shawn Wright, 51, of  the west central neighborhood in Spokane, Wash., has been featured in a CDC a national educational campaign.   Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Diesease and Control Prevention. (SR photo: Dan Pelle)

Shawn Wright was a smoker. Nothing could stop him: not the death of his father; not the scolding of doctors; not the high taxes; not the banishment from bars and restaurants; not his girlfriend’s disapproval. Wright even kept smoking as oncologists diagnosed his throat cancer, one Pall Mall after another. He smoked right before and right after each of his 36 radiation treatments. And then surgeons sliced his neck open and cut out his larynx. “There I am in the hospital, looking at myself in the mirror after my surgery and I thought ‘Whoa … What have I done to myself?’ ” said Wright, now 51 years old. “That was it. There was no way I was going to stick a cigarette into that hole in my neck so I could smoke.” That was 3  ½ years ago. Today he is exhibiting his disfigured neck as a key part of the U.S. government’s newest front in the fight against smoking/John Stucke, SR. More here.

Question: Are these commercials over the top? Or effective? Or both?