United Kingdom: Festive Sex Ads Warn "It Could Be You"

Britain's Department of Health has pledged to spend £2 million (US $3.1 million) during this year's office party season to address the dramatic surge of STDs among people in their 20s. The campaign will include radio advertisements with the slogan: "To enter the sex lottery, just sleep with someone without a condom." Advertisements with a sexual lottery theme will be targeted through magazines, clubs and pubs at a generation that appears to be ignoring the safer sex message that was drilled home in the AIDS-conscious 1980s.

Campaign proposals viewed by the government include the slogans, "The Lottery changed my life," a reminder that many common STDs, such as hepatitis B and herpes, can have long-term consequences. "How do you know if your partner has an STI [sexually transmitted infection]?" asks another proposed advertisement, with the answer: "You don't." "Look what I picked up in the Lottery," one advertisement says, pointing out that eight STDs have no apparent symptoms.

"The tone needs to be positive and realistic and lighthearted, and not be seen as authoritarian and patronizing or desperately going for street [credibility]," said one source close to the advertising agency producing the campaign. Sexual health campaigners have complained for years that attempts to popularize responsible sex among the young have been either heavy-handed or of poor quality. The first government campaign to combat HIV/AIDS, launched in 1986, was criticized for featuring tombstones.

One in nine British adults have had an STD at some point in their lives. Diagnoses of STDs among those under age 20 have soared by a third since 1995. In 2000, almost 1 percent of girls ages 16 to 19 had been diagnosed with chlamydia, which has been linked to sterility. A spokesperson for the National Lottery said, "Initially we were worried that the campaign would confuse people. However, it's an important issue being tackled at an important time."

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