Andrzej Pągowski: the slogan: papierosy są do d*** has not lost its validity

For years you have been involved in social campaigns, including health campaigns. Looking at our society, do you see a pressing need for a specific campaign?

I am from the generation that spent their free time in the backyard and active. I have children who are already born in completely different times, and I think the biggest problem is that a child needs to be on the move. What we invest in ourselves at the beginning will pay off in the future. I was fortunate that my father was old-school and observed that children should be fit, healthy, eat well. And that pays off. If, on the other hand, I explain to my son or my daughter today that sitting in front of the computer is fine, but it must be balanced with gymnastics, then unfortunately it doesn't work. My children are already terrible, and I have every hope that they will understand this in a while. My son recently came back from skiing and says that his fitness is going down. Well, but how can it not sit down for him, when in elementary school you were not allowed to exercise in the gym, because you could hurt yourself, and in high school it was already poor at all?

I think that obesity problems in the younger generation are probably such a most pressing problem at the moment.

We all remember your „Papierosy są do dupy” (eng. Cigarettes suck) campaign. Would you do something different today, change something, maybe use more blunt words?

I reached the ceiling in this famous poster. I also tried on the subject many times at the request of the Ministry of Health, which was the main commissioner and publisher of this poster. I did "Cigarettes suck forever" several times, because it turned out that years later, despite the campaign, however, this problem with smoking is still there. I did the poster "I smoke, so I stink," because I have always believed that smoking affects the lungs and internal organs differently, but one stinks always. Especially this very poster was dedicated to ladies, because many times meeting a woman I felt that she smoked cigarettes, and this could not be covered with cosmetics or nice conversation.

What is your prescription for a healthy life?

It is necessary to be positive. I think that if someone has black clouds inside him, if someone has those corners of his mouth down, if someone doesn't like people, if someone is closed to his problems, then even if we don't know how much we want to help him, it won't work. Doctors say that if you're sick and you're going to get better, you have to be optimistic about it. I've run cancer campaigns if we have early detection of cancer, which is always a terrible verdict anyway, but we have the conviction and belief in ourselves that we can make it, somehow the body listens to it differently. We can't say we won't make it.