News

French Ad Shocks, but Will It Stop Young Smokers?

25.02.2010

PARIS — A new French antismoking advertisement aimed at the young that plays off a pornographic stereotype has gotten more attention than even its creators intended, and critics suggest that it offends common decency and creates a false analogy between oral sex and smoking.

France has banned smoking in cafes, bars and restaurants. But smoking is still increasing among the young in France, according to the French Office for the Prevention of Smoking, prompting an antitobacco organization called Droits des Non-fumeurs, or Nonsmokers’ Rights, to create the ad.

The slogan is bland enough: “To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco.” But it accompanies photographs of an older man, his torso seen from the side, pushing down on the head of a teenage girl with a cigarette in her mouth. Her eyes are at belt level, glancing upward fearfully. The cigarette appears to emerge from the adult’s trousers.

Two other ads show young men in the same position as the girl, though the adult is wearing a suit jacket and a watch.

Marco de la Fuente, vice president of BDDP & Fils, the advertising firm that created the campaign, said the ads were not designed either “to please or to shock people, but to change, to put back into the news a topic we don’t talk about enough, which threatens young people.”

According to the French Office for the Prevention of Smoking, between 2004 and 2007, and 2008 and 2009, the percentage of daily smokers among French 14-year-olds rose to 8 percent from 5 percent; among 16-year-olds, it increased to 18 percent from 14 percent. A quarter of 18-year-olds are daily smokers.

“The younger you begin to smoke, the stronger the addiction,” Mr. de la Fuente said in an interview. “But young people think they’re invincible. They like to flirt with danger.” He added that young people saw smoking as a symbol of emancipation, a passage to adulthood and a “transgressive act.”

The ads, he said, try to convince them that smoking is “an act of naïveté and submission.”

He continued: “We 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.”

But the reaction on the Web site of Droits des Non-fumeurs has been mixed. One comment read, “The campaign trivializes sexual abuse — worse, it implies guilt on the part of the abused.”

Florence Montreynaud, the president of La Meute des Chiennes de Garde, or the Pack of Female Watchdogs, which opposes symbols of sexual violence in films and advertising, called the ads “unbearable” and said “what is most shocking is the banalization of sexual violence.”

She is a feminist, she said, and a longtime member of Droits des Non-fumeurs. “But it is terrible to represent in the public space this kind of image restricted to pornography,” she added. “I’m appalled. It’s a poverty of imagination. When people have no ideas, they use female bodies.”

Nadine Morano, the secretary of state for the family, said she wanted the campaign to stop, saying she found the symbolism intolerable. “One can shock on the issue of tobacco, that doesn’t bother me, but there are other campaigns to do instead of this one,” she told Radio Monte Carlo.

The president of Droits des Non-fumeurs, Gérard Audureau, said the campaign was started after being viewed favorably by high school students. For 18 years, he said, “we did it gently, on the health aspect, with deteriorated lungs, but young people feel invincible, immortal.”

The newspaper Le Parisien quoted him as saying: “Using sex is a way to get their attention. And if it’s necessary to shock, let’s shock.”

Bertrand Dautzenberg, president of the French Office for the Prevention of Smoking, doubted the ads would work. Quoted in Le Parisien, he said, “This will shock adults while not scaring kids.”

By STEVEN ERLANGER, Nytimes
February 23, 2010

Having to Comply with Law, Tobacconists Get Use of Colors

25.01.2010

According to several public health organizations, the claims of cigarette companies regarding their willingness to obey the new regulations in marketing low-tar cigarettes are controversial, as they would literary complain but still, conceal the truth.

Starting with June 2010, in compliance with Tobacco Control Act, it will be prohibited for cigarette makers to name their products as “light” or “low-tar” suggesting that some styles are less harmful than others are.

However, in a move, which opponents state circumvents the latest law, tobacconists intend to use colors to make distinctions between their products.

Thus, Philip Morris USA will change the name of Marlboro Lights, the number one cigarette across the nation, to Marlboro Gold, and Marlboro Ultra Lights are to be renamed to Marlboro Silver.

Moreover, R.J. Reynolds, the second largest tobacco company in America, changed the names of major growth brands several months ago. Pall Mall Lights changed into Pall Mall Blue and Salem Ultra Lights to Salem Silver.

Meantime, anti-smoking advocates criticize the move. Gregory N. Connolly from the Harvard Public Health School stated tobacco giants are trying to evade the legislation, as they are applying specific colors to maintain one of the most misleading product descriptions and adapt it for current reality.

The provision, coming into force in June does not ban cigarette industry from manufacturing low-tar cigarettes, but just from naming them “light” in advertising. The companies admit they are honoring the letter of the new law and should be eligible to use colors to deliver various product styles to adult smokers.

However, senior marketing director for Altria, owner of Philip Morris argued that colors have been in use for years as they serve to identify different brands and styles of cigarette products, and tobacco industry has never used colors to emphasize that one product is safer than the other.

James E. Dillard IIII, Altria’s vice president sent a letter to U.S. Food And Drug Administration, stating that baring the industry from using colors would be not constitutional in conformity with their commercial speech rights.

The Tobacco Control Act approved last year provided the FDA with legal and broad power to regulate tobacco industry. Among other ordinances, there is one that requires cigarette makers to prove the Agency that their products are less harmful than other products prior to marketing them as safer ones.

In January, the FDA said in statement that it might ban the usage of such colors as silver or blue, which major tobacconists are intending to write on cigarette packs, in place of the words “light” or “Ultra-light”.

FDA communications manager, Kathleen Quinn, admitted they would carefully revise the usage of colors and publish the results of their investigation by June 22, the first anniversary of the legislation’s implementation and the date of the wording ban coming into effect.

Tobacco giants are already using colors instead of terms such as “light” and “ultra-light” in almost 80 countries around the world.

By Clark Moore, Staff Writer

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