[Fight against smoking: information and misinformation]

For decades tobacco manufacturers have attempted to trivialise the health risks associated with tobacco, reinforce and enhance its social acceptability using powerful communication and reprehensible strategies. Prevention campaigns have contributed to raise public awareness on the health risks associated with smoking. They have also allowed for an evolution of the social representation of tobacco use. From 2001, to stop tobacco consumption taking off again, media campaigns have become more offensive both in content and form. Today the communication strategy places as priority objectives the reinforcement of the socially unacceptable character of tobacco use (denormalisation) via information on health risks and cessation support for smokers to quit. In 2002, a media campaign (TV, radio, press) denounced the toxicity of tobacco smoke provoking a true remobilisation of public opinion against tobacco.