We all know smoking causes cancer. We all know smoking causes emphysema. We all know smoking increases your chance of having a stroke, seriously harms your unborn child and is just generally a really terrible idea.

And yet… there are still smokers. And a whole lot of them.

Normally fear and common sense are the devices we use to persuade people to quit smoking but a new Queensland campaign is tapping into a different emotion: vanity.

The campaign, targeted at young female smokers, is called ‘Your Future Is Not Pretty’. It focuses on the damage smoking can do to your appearance, from accelerating the ageing process, right through to staining your teeth and fingernails.

To promote the campaign, they’ve gone to town with Photoshop, showing us what would happen to former Miss Universe contestant Rachel Finch in a few years if she took up smoking:

This is what would happen to Rachel Finch if she started smoking.

Eech.

Sure, there’s more to life than looking young and gorgeous but sometimes people are terrible at making long-term decisions. So telling young women that smoking will make them stinky and ugly now could well be a better incentive to quit than telling them smoking will make them sick later.

A similar advertisement that played on male vanity a few years ago:

Here are a few more of the skin-deep effects of smoking – from the ‘Your Future Is Not Pretty’ flyer:

Want more proof? Check out these sets of identical twins. In each pair, one is a smoker and one is not.

The twin on the right is the smoker.

The twin on the left is the smoker.

The twin on the right is the smoker.

The twin on the right is the smoker.

Both are smokers, but the twin on the right has been smoking for 14 years longer than the twin on the left.

The twin on the right is the smoker.

The twin on the left is the smoker.

Do you think playing to people’s vanity could help them quit smoking?