Freak Week: Unholy Smokes

From Europe to America, last week’s ads put everyone on edge. The strongest indignation was reserved for a provocative French anti-smoking campaign from BDDP & FILS that likens cigarette addiction to forced oral sex. “To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco,” say the ads, which show older men pushing down on the heads of young people, who are in a compromised position at belt level, cigarette in mouth. The agency defended its work, saying the goal wasn’t to shock but to get teens to think of smoking not as a “transgressive act,” but an “act of naiveté and submission.”