Writing in Skip’s Corner, commentator Skip Murray questioned whether the display could mislead families about the risks of vaping and discourage parents who smoke from switching.

The event, at Heritage Port in Wheeling, West Virginia, on 29 October, will celebrate the 60th anniversary of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Alongside the entertainment, Dr William Mercer is due to deliver an anti-vaping message.

According to local broadcaster WTRF, Mercer plans to bring pig lungs he described as “The good lungs, the black lungs”, so children can look at them and think, “my gosh that’s what my lungs could look like.”

Murray said the lungs had been used for years to teach children about the effects of cigarette smoking.

“So when the message changed from smoking to vaping, why didn’t the demonstration change with it?” Murray wrote.

So when the message changed from smoking to vaping, why didn’t the demonstration change with it?

Skip Murray · Would Charles Schulz Have Done It This Way?

From smoking prevention to vaping warnings

Mercer has a long history in tobacco prevention. His original Joe Too Cool to Smoke programme used Snoopy’s Joe Cool character to discourage children from smoking and help people who smoked to quit.

Murray traced how the campaign’s name changed to Joe Too Cool to Smoke/Vape and then Joe Too Cool to Vape, as its focus shifted towards youth vaping.

The lung display remained part of the approach. Murray cited local reporting from 2015 and 2018 describing the pig lungs as a demonstration of smoking damage.

The criticism centres on what families might infer when that same display accompanies an anti-vaping message.

Guidance for a pig-lung demonstration kit from an Ontario public-health unit explicitly states that the lungs were designed to show the effects of commercial tobacco smoke. It says the demonstration can also provide an opportunity to discuss cannabis and vaping.

NHS guidance explains that vapes heat liquid to produce an aerosol. Tar and carbon monoxide, two harmful substances found in tobacco smoke, are absent from vape aerosol.

The NHS advises that children and non-smokers should never vape, while stating that switching to vaping is less harmful than continuing to smoke.

A message parents will hear too

Murray warned that an inaccurate impression of vaping’s risks could reach parents attending the event, including those struggling to stop smoking.

A parent who sees blackened lungs presented alongside an anti-vaping warning could conclude that switching would offer no meaningful reduction in harm, Murray argued.

There was also a risk to children’s trust in future health advice if they later discovered the display had originally illustrated cigarette-smoking damage.

“If they come to believe they were misled, why should that young person trust the next warning, or the next piece of advice a doctor gives them?” Murray wrote.

Murray called for prevention messages that explain nicotine dependence and the risks of both products, while recognising the different choices facing a child considering nicotine and an adult already smoking.

“Protecting children and helping adults who smoke are not competing goals. We can do both.”