ADS GRAPHICALLY DEPICT EX-SMOKER'S FIGHT FOR LIFE

BOSTON - Pam Laffin, a 29-year-old mother of two, is waging the battle
of her life - and possibly, death - on prime-time television in
Massachusetts.

Laffin's struggle to survive while slowly suffocating from the
debilitating and deadly lung disease emphysema is being broadcast in a
six-part series of compelling and often-graphic antismoking
commercials sponsored by the state Department of Public Health.

The 30-second documentary-style sequences, which cost $1.5 million to
produce, air through Dec. 5.

Viewers are shown close-ups of a healthy lung next to a blackened
emphysemic lung, and the loop of a transplant scar that traces under
Laffin's arm and across her back. Laffin gulps air through an oxygen
mask at one point and describes her terror at the thought of not being
able to breathe. Her 10-year-old daughter says: "All my friends say,
`Oh, I want to be like my mom when I grow up, and I can't say that.'"

It may be a painful and often-unflattering portrait, but Laffin does
not regret that it may be her last. The Massachusetts Quitline, whose
telephone number airs at the end of each ad, has registered a sixfold
increase in calls since the commercials began last month.

"I'd give anything just to be a mom instead of some dying reminder of
what not to do," Laffin says in the concluding segment. "I just hope
you can learn from my life before you have to pay with your own."

The campaign is the latest indication that Massachusetts has no
intention of retreating from its antismoking offensive in the face of
intense lobbying from the tobacco industry. The second state to adopt
a cigarette tax and the first to divest its pension funds of tobacco
company stocks and bonds, Massachusetts also has one of the few laws
requiring cigarette manufacturers to disclose their ingredients. And
the city of Boston recently enacted a restaurant smoking ban.

Consumption in Massachusetts dropped by 31 percent between 1992 and
early 1997, more than three times the nationwide rate. Most
significantly, youth tobacco use has not spiked, state public health
data show.

The department nevertheless began rethinking its advertising approach
after studying an Australian campaign that portrayed the destruction
cigarette smoke creates through the throat and lungs.

The real-life campaign debuted earlier this year with teenage smokers
describing what it was like to be addicted to cigarettes. Telling
Laffin's story seemed a logical next step, said Gregory Connolly, the
state's tobacco-control program director.

"Adult smokers want to be told something new. They want to see some
graphic material, and they want to see it personalized," he said.
"It's hard not to look at Pam and say, `That could be me.' "

Laffin, who smoked her first cigarette when she was 10 from a free
Benson & Hedges sample four-pack at the corner store, was later
suspended for smoking in school, but allowed to smoke at home when she
reached 16.

By 21, she had smoked through two pregnancies and developed a
pack-a-day habit and bronchial asthma. By 23, she had chronic asthma.
A year later, when she finally quit smoking, Laffin could barely raise
a cigarette to her lips or stand in the shower without struggling to
catch her breath. Her asthma inhaler provided no relief.

Tests showed she had emphysema, an incurable disease caused by
exposure to cigarette smoke, which gradually destroys air sacs in the
lungs and reduces oxygen to the bloodstream, causing severe shortness
of breath. In May 1995, her left lung was replaced with a donor lung.
But her body began rejecting the new lung last year, and she needs a
second transplant.

Anorexic before the first transplant and an already-slight figure at
5-foot-3, Laffin has since gained 100 pounds. Her right lung has
become emphysemic, swelling so much that she can feel it pressing
against her trachea and left lung. Her face is bloated and her neck
humped from steroids and a seemingly endless supply of
medications.

Laffin knows her chance of survival is slim given her condition (she
can walk only 400 feet at a stretch), the rarity of second lung
transplants, and the shortage of donors. Added to that, the average
wait for a new lung is about one year, which may be too long, said
Joseph LoCicero III, chief of general thoracic surgery at Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

"Without another transplant, she probably would not live more than one
or two years," he said, adding, "The cards are stacked against her,
but she's doing everything she can."

Checked-by: Patrick Henry