ASH launches new tobacco ad offensive

Anti-smoking lobby group ASH launched an offensive against the tobacco industry this week, backed by its first poster advertising.

The campaign coincides with ASH’s change of corporate identity, and with a decision expected this week from the Legal Aid Board on whether smokers suing the tobacco industry should be granted legal aid.

Earlier this year, ASH revealed it was moving away from health promotion and education to focus on attacking the tobacco industry (MW May 10).

The group has ditched its slogan “ASH – Action on Smoking and Health” and replaced it with “The Campaign for Freedom from Tobacco”.

The lobbyist’s poster, up for 24 hours at a site off London’s Oxford Street, was designed by Stephen Franks of Franks & Franks. It plays on the ads for Marlboro Country, but instead of showing railroad trucks rattling through the American Mid-West, it shows an ambulance driving through the English countryside.

An ASH spokeswoman says the group tried to put up a lobbying poster some years ago, but a tobacco company pasted over it after one hour.