Three sick children portrayed in City Hall’s newest anti-cigarette ad may not be victims of tobacco smoke after all.
The footage of the children came from photo-agency archives, the Health Department said in a statement.
“The children pictured in this ad are real patients, suffering from conditions that have been clearly associated with exposure to secondhand smoke,” the statement said.
“The children are not presented as individual victims of environmental tobacco smoke. We do not know their individual medical histories.”
Paula Alex, CEO of the Advertising Educational Foundation, said, “That is not necessarily truthful advertising.”
Jan Wicks, a University of Arkansas expert in advertising ethics, added, “I would have tried to find children who actually did have illnesses due to secondhand smoke.”
The ad – the latest in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s two-year anti-smoking campaign – hit the air last week.
It shows a little girl having her ear checked, a boy wearing an oxygen mask, and another boy whose lungs are being ventilated.
“When you smoke around kids, you expose them to thousands of chemicals that trigger severe health problems like painful ear infections, crippling asthma, deadly pneumonia,” says the voiceover.
Wicks said that government agencies have a special responsibility to be truthful in advertising, and that the ad probably should include a disclaimer explaining that secondhand smoke didn’t sicken the children.
“It’s in the best interests of government and the public to bend over backward to be accurate and clear in all communications,” Wicks said.
Legally, the ad is probably in the clear since it doesn’t specifically claim the anonymous children were sickened by cigarettes, said John Feldman, an advertising-law expert with the Reed Smith firm in Washington.
“I don’t believe there is a representation being made . . . other than secondhand smoke can cause these conditions, or does cause these conditions,” Feldman said.
There’s little doubt about the science of the ad, drawn from a 2006 report by the US surgeon general that said secondhand smoke can cause children to suffer respiratory problems, ear infections and asthma.
The ad doesn’t mention the most chilling finding – that tobacco smoke can cause sudden infant death syndrome.
Since the city began running its graphic anti-smoking ads in 2006, calls to the 311 help line by people seeking to quit have more than doubled, to 46,000 last year, said Sarah Perl, an assistant commissioner of health.
This year, the city plans to spend $10 million on the TV ad campaign. “The city is very committed to this approach,” Perl said.