cleaning up unwholesome advertising — for the children!

From José Guardia, I learned about a new anti-smoking campaign in France, which obviously hopes to shock young people into not smoking by means of disturbing images.

The slogan is this:

“To smoke is to be a slave of tobacco”

I agree with José that the message is powerful. All the more so because of the obvious, unstated subtext.
If you were to see one of these billboards from a distance, the word “slave” conveys a certain meaning, don’t you think?
To illustrate, I thought I would “clean up” the ad a bit. You know, censor out offensive images of cigarettes as the anti-smokers would like us to do? So the young people aren’t corrupted?
Moreover, because I found the ad so disturbing, I felt almost a civic duty to clean it up. For the children!
So here’s the cleaner, healthier version!

I also took out all references to tobacco.
We can’t be too careful!
MORE: Many thanks to José Guardia for the link!
Calling the French a bunch of prudes, José also quotes an incredible statement from the leader of the project:

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.”

Wow, and all this time I thought “submission” had something to do with Islam.