Ads in Reverse

The American Cancer Society has thought up a new kind of advertising -- uncommercial. Called "Athletes Against Cancer," the campaign is a series of cigarette testimonials in reverse. "I don't smoke," grins Olympics Decathlon Champion Bob Mathias. "Smoking cuts down on wind. And an athlete needs wind as much as he needs his legs. Athletes in top condition don't smoke -- they can't afford to." Yankee Pitcher Whitey Ford (who did some testimonial commercials last year for Camels) says: "Cigarette smoking is dangerous for your health. I guess we all know that science has proved it to be the major cause of lung cancer." Other anti-cigarette athletes: Track Stars Jim Beatty and Tom Courtney, Tank Stars Buster Crabbe and Patricia McCormick, Fighters Jack Dempsey, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Floyd Patterson.

Aiming its ads at young people, the Cancer Society supplies them free to national teen-age magazines that will promise to run them (ten have so far signed up). "We want to change the image of the cigarette smoker for youngsters," says a spokesman for the society. "If we can just get them before they start!"

In Europe the anti-tobacco campaign is far less circumspect. The British Ministry of Health has put up more than a million posters. One says: "Why be another sheep? Before you smoke, THINK. Cigarettes cause lung cancer." Another shows a half-open coffin, with the legend: "The big Flip-Top Box for the Smoker." In Italy, all tobacco advertising was made illegal in 1962

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