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Anti-smoking ads banned
16 May, 2007
Department of Health adverts deemed too 'distressing' for children
An anti-smoking poster campaign from the Department of Health (DoH) that featured images of people with fish hooks in their faces has been banned following a slew of complaints.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) told the DoH not to repeat the campaign after receiving complaints that the images used in the posters were offensive, frightening and distressing – with 152 people complaining the adverts had upset their children.
The watchdog said the addicted smokers looked ‘distressed and in pain’ and although the posters had not been placed near schools they had appeared in places where they could easily be seen by children.
The ASA also found that TV adverts featuring the hooks breached advertising rules by being broadcast when older children could be watching, but ruled against complaints about the adverts on the internet, in magazines and papers.
The DoH said the adverts did not encourage or condone violence or cruelty and said the hook image was used to encourage people to stop smoking and prevent harm.
It added that, since the launch of the campaign, 83,606 smokers had phoned the NHS Smoking Helpline; 545,564 had visited the gosmokefree website; 195,000 had had interactions with the TV pages and 6,743 had made contact via SMS.