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Smoking campaign complaints upheld
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld complaints it received over a Department of Health anti-smoking campaign shown earlier this year.
The television advert showed a man and woman actively smoking being dragged along the floor by a wire attached to a hook in their mouths, while a voice-over says “The average smoker needs over 5,000 cigarettes a year. Get unhooked.”
The complainants said that the TV and poster adverts were offensive and distressing, with 152 saying they upset children.
The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) consequently upheld that the adverts should not have been shown around programmes aimed at children or teenagers and that the posters could be upsetting to youngsters.
The DoH argued that both strategies – which were designed to confront and encourage smokers to stop smoking using a hook metaphor to represent the controlling nature of nicotine addiction – were aimed at protecting people from its damaging effects, including 9 per cent of 11 to 15-year-olds who smoke. In this context, the adverts were deemed acceptable.
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