[6/26] PHILIP MORRIS DECEPTIVE AD CAMPAIGN BANNED IN FRANCE

A court in Paris has banned an advertising campaign by Philip Morris which argues breathing secondhand tobacco smoke poses a smaller health risk than eating cookies or drinking milk or fluoridated water.

It is the first time a court has banned an issue-based ad campaign by the European unit of the maker of Marlboro cigarettes.

Meanwhile, challenges to the ads, now running many European countries, are still underway.

The following press release, which ASH issued when the ads first began to appear, provides some background on the issue.

Antismoking activists may want to use the facts and arguments in ASH's release in their own countries.

ASH PRESS RELEASE:

BEWARE OF COOKIES, CHLORINATED WATER, AND PEPPER -- PHILIP MORRIS

Many Things Are More Dangerous Than Secondhand Smoke, Says Company But This Ignores Science, as Well as Freedom To Choose, Says ASH

Philip Morris has launched a new ad campaign, trying to convince Europeans that cookies, chlorinated water, pepper, and other common substances are far more dangerous than secondhand tobacco smoke.

But while the former U.S. Surgeon General, American Medical Association, World Health Organization, American Cancer Society, and many other eminent bodies have all determined that secondhand smoke causes over 50,000 nonsmoker deaths each year, no reputable scientific or medical organization has ever though it necessary to compute a body count for cookies, chlorinated water, pepper, or the other alleged killers cited by Philip Morris.

Moreover, a recent report in the journal Pediatrics estimates that parental tobacco smoke kills over 100 children each year as a result of lower respiratory tract infections which prove fatal, and also sends an estimated four million youngsters to hospitals or doctors' offices with a wide variety of ailments.

But this respected medical publication has never seen any need to estimate how many -- if any -- deaths or doctors' visits result from cookie eating.

"Philip Morris' alleged comparison also obscures a key difference between risks people voluntarily choose to take to achieve some benefit for themselves, and those risks thrust upon them by others, " says law professor John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

"There is a world of difference between people who choose to accept the risk of auto racing on a closed track because of the pleasure it brings them, and those who claim to have a right to race their cars on city streets where their pleasure taking seriously endangers others," he says.

People who eat cookies or use pepper risk only their own health, whereas people who smoke endanger all those in the room with them, including children and most adults who in no way desire to accept these dangers.

For example, nonsmoking restaurant patrons are placed at risk by an activity which doesn't benefit them in any way, and which many find seriously detracts from the experience of dining, says Banzhaf.

ASH - ACTION ON SMOKING AND HEALTH 2013 H Street, NW / Washington, DC 20006 / (202) 659-4310