Anti-smoking campaign causes a stir in France
The Non-Smokers' Rights Association in France (l'association Droits des non-fumeurs) and its ad agency BDDP & Fils produced a media ad likening teen smoking to submission to the tobacco industry. The ad has generated lots of buzz inside and outside of France, but many French leaders have publicly denounced the ad as too provocative and in downright bad taste. The ads shows two teens on their knees at eye level with a cigarette protruding from their mouths at a man's crotch, with the caption 'Smoking makes you a slave to tobacco'. Rémi Parola, the association's director, credits the ads' provocative nature with the buzz it generated, and defends it from detractors as helping raise awareness where other anti-smoking campagins go unnoticed.
Roselyne Bachelot, France's Health Minister, judged the ad to be 'innapropriate' and 'counter-productive', while the Secretary of State for Families Nadine Morano called for the ads to be pulled.
Marco de la Fuente, The agency's vice president, had this to say, "the campaign seeks to further the view that smoking does is a sign of submission and naivety: a behavioral, psychological, and physical submission to a drug that controls youths acts, harms their bodies and is very expensive".
