"Controversial Ad Compares Tobacco Companies to 9/11 Terrorists"
In an earlier release, this organization, ASH U.S., correctly identified a controversial antismoking ad, picturing two burning cigarettes resembling New york City's Twin Towers afire after being struck by terrorists, as being produced by Doyle Dane Bernback for Action on Smoking and Health in New Zealand.
While that statement is technically correct, ASH has subsequently been advised by Ben Youdan, Director of ASH New Zealand, that: "this poster is a confidential draft, is not published and is not in the public domain. . . . It is still a draft creative concept, not a final or executed campaign."
From New York Metro:
MAR 5, 2008
MANHATTAN. The image was familiar to Jim Riches: Two white columns with smoke pouring out.
Yet the image was not from 9/11. It was an antismoking ad showing two cigarettes with the caption, “Terrorism-related deaths since 2001: 11,337. Tobacco-related deaths since 2001: 30,000,000.”
“The buildings were burning, and 3,000 people died a brutal death — some jumped out of windows,” recalled Riches, whose firefighter son died on Sept. 11. “To compare smoking a cigarette to this terrorist attack is insulting to the people who died.”
The analogy turns tobacco companies into terrorists.
“But people smoke of their own free will,” said Riches. “On 9/11, those people were murdered.”
The ad’s already sparked controversy on the Web, after it was posted by the New Zealand branch of the antismoking group Action on Smoking and Health. Its American counterpart put the ad up on its own Web site and solicited comments from members, though yesterday the ad was gone.
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