More than 200,000 Americans Quit Smoking after Seeing Graphic Ad Campaign

An estimated 200,000 Americans quit smoking in the wake of a federally funded ad campaign that graphically showed the consequences of tobacco use, according to a study released Monday.

The research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in the journal of Lancet claims that an estimated 1.6 million U.S. smokers attempted to quit last year after encountering the three-month "Tips From Former Smokers" campaign, which was funded by the Affordable Care Act. Of those, 200,000 quit shortly after the campaign and more than 100,000 are expected to stop permanently.

"The TIPS campaign surpassed our expectations," CDC Director Thomas Frieden told reporters in a call Monday, saying the results represented more than a doubling of initial goals. "That's a tremendous success story. These are Americans that will live longer lives, healthier lives with lower health-care costs."

The $54 million ad series, which ended in June 2012, featured stark images and emotional pleas from ex-smokers suffering from a variety of ailments, including amputated limbs, oral and throat cancer, paralysis, lung damage, strokes, and heart attacks. One of the most haunting ads featured a 52-year-old North Carolina woman named Terrie Hall, who had to have her larynx removed after being diagnosed with throat cancer. She now speaks with the help of an artificial voice box.

"The only voice my grandson's ever heard is this one," she says in a robot-like voice in one commercial. The CDC study surveyed a randomly selected group of about 3,000 smokers and 2,200 nonsmokers before and after the initial ad campaign. Almost 80 percent of smokers and nearly 75 percent of nonsmokers recalled seeing at least one of the ads during the campaign, the CDC found.