For the very first time, the US health authorities are launching an advertisement to counteract the growing popularity of e-cigarettes. Starting next week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is launching the latest in its series of advertising campaigns designed specifically to sway Americans' feelings about cigarettes.

The campaign expands on the CDC's three-year-old 'Tips from Former Smokers' series, which enlists real people who've been ravaged by smoking.

The new ads will also include former e-cigarette users since e-cigarettes do not yet face the same restrictions on marketing that traditional tobacco products do.

But still the CDC is concerned that widespread marketing of e-cigarette could reverse decades of public health efforts to portray the negative effects of smoking.

As per sources, the CDC's new campaign will run for 20 weeks and include broadcast, print, billboards and online ads. CDC has spent about $230 million since 2012 on 'Tips from Former Smokers'.

According to a press release by the CDC in advance of the campaign's launch, one radio and print ad features a 35-year-old named Kristy who tries to use e-cigarettes in order to quit smoking but later she ends up using both products instead.

It has been found that the wars between the CDC and Big Tobacco have intensified since the rise of electronic cigarettes, which face none of the advertising restrictions that have kept cigarette ads off television since 1971.

Before Richard Nixon signed a ban on broadcast advertising, tobacco companies spent almost 60% of their marketing dollars on TV and radio. They even used cartoon characters like Fred Flintstone to market cigarettes to kids.

Erika Sward, the American Lung Association's assistant vice-president for national advocacy, said, "This is really an industry, the larger tobacco industry with e-cigarettes, which threatens to get another generation addicted to nicotine".