Oral Sex Anti-smoking Ad Raises Uproar in France

A French anti-smoking advertisement showing teenagers in a pose suggesting oral sex with a cigarette has caused an uproar.

The poster for the advert shows male and female teenagers kneeling in front of a man, as if being forced to have oral sex, reports The Independent.

A ciggies takes the place of the man's sexual organ, with the caption reading: "Smoking is to be a slave to tobacco."

However, feminist and pro-family campaigners are not happy with the "colourful" campaign, attacking it as "scandalous" and "potentially counter-productive".

Marco de la Fuente, the leader of the project for the BDDP et Fils ad agency, said: "The old arguments - tobacco is bad for you - don't work any more. The message here is that tobacco is a form of submission. In the popular imagination, oral sex is the perfect symbol of submission."

Girard Audureau, the president of Les Droits des Non-fumeurs (The Rights of Non-smokers), the pressure group which commissioned the ads, said health arguments did not reach teenagers.

"Young people think that they are invincible, immortal," he said.

"Fear of sexual exploitation worries them more than illness."

Christiane Terry, of the conservative group Familles de France, said: "Mixing up tobacco dependence and sex is ridiculous and scandalous."

Source-ANI
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