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Hey Kids: Smoking Blows; Teen Anti-Smoking Ad Inflames the French

by Brett Singer (Subscribe to Brett Singer's posts)
Feb 24th 2010 12:22PM

6Comments

Filed under: Teens

Anti-smoking ads have sparked controversy. Credit: BDDP ET FILS / AFP / Getty Images

A French anti-smoking ad that seems to equate smoking with oral sex is igniting passions in Paris and the rest of the country.

According to London's Daily Telegraph, ads from the group Droits des Non-Fumeurs, which translates to "Non-Smokers' Rights," come with the tagline, as translated by the Telegraph, "Smoking means being a slave to tobacco."

Two of the adds, which can be seen on the Web site for the advertising agency BDDP & Fils, feature a young man, presumed to be a teenager, with a cigarette in his mouth. He is kneeling in front of an older man in a business suit, and the cigarette is at the older man's crotch; the older man's face is not visible. A similar ad features a young woman with an older man.

BDDP & Fils offers an explanation for the campaign: There has been a rise in teen smoking in France.

Using the online translation tool Babel Fish to translate the French text, the agency says "the rate of daily smokers increased by 5 to 8 percent to 14 years, from 8 to 10 percent to 15 years, from 14 to 18 percent to 16 years, from 20 to 22 percent to 17 years and from 24 to 25 percent to 18 years."

As for why the group decided to "break with the tepidity of the preventive campaigns," the agency's site says "young people are insensitive" to anti-smoking arguments regarding their health.

"The photographs were gracefully carried out by the photographer Thomas Geffrier," BDDP's Web site adds.

BDDP & Fils vice president Marco de la Fuente tells The New York Times that "young people think they're invincible. They like to flirt with danger," and that the campaign was designed to show them that smoking is "an act of naïveté and submission."

He tells the Times one "can't be tepid on this subject; we have to hit hard. We are working against years of myth on the basis of films and stars, and we fight against this with zero euros."

Droits des Non-Fumeurs' president, Gérard Audureau, tells the Times "the campaign was started after being viewed favorably by high school students."

Whether or not the ads will lead to a reduction in the smoking rate is unclear, but they have definitely inspired a good deal of Gallic gall.

"The campaign trivialises sexual abuse -- worse, it implies guilt on the part of the abused," the Telegraph quotes a commenter from the Droits des Non-Fumeurs Web site as saying.

"As far as I know, practising fellatio doesn't cause cancer," Antoinette Fouque, of the group Movement for Women's Liberation, tells the French newspaper Le Parisien.

Related: Smoking - It's A Drag on Fitness

Tags: anti smoking, anti smoking ad, france, french anti smoking ad, smoking, teens smoking, TeensSmoking

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