Did you happen to catch John Laws yesterday? (I would prefer not to but I don’t control the radio station in the office). Anyway, Lawsy is bothered by the bright colours that cigarette packets are now sporting, and wants to make it law that all cigarette packets have to be plain white, (presumably aside from the shock value pictures). He’s also annoyed by smokers who ask their tobacconist for packs with the less gory pictures, and smokers who shift their cigarettes into warning-free cigarette cases.
Are people really so deluded that they believe smokers would quit if only they focused on the gangrenous foot instead of the pretty parts of the box? They need to put less effort into grossing people out and more effort into convincing smokers that quitting is something they are capable of achieving. I know when I smoked, I despaired of ever being able to quit because I thought I was incapable of it, not because I was ignorant of the dangers of smoking. The warning labels just sunk my spirits lower, because not only was I convinced that I was powerless to overcome my addiction but I was also facing a horrible and (in my mind) unavoidable death. Yet those things hadn’t stopped me taking up smoking in the first place - as a stupid, rebellious and depressed teen, I simply didn’t care because I didn’t intend to smoke much or for long and so those warnings had nothing to do with me because I was only going to be a casual or social smoker and I wouldn’t do it long enough to suffer long-term effects :rolleyes:
I think all the anti-smoking rhetoric, by now, is either preaching to the choir or will backfire among kids. Think about it: when older people were kids, smoking was something that was just bad for them, but not their elders, and only in vaguely silly or implausible sounding ways such as that it would “stunt your growth”. Now, however, the message that smoking is unacceptable is something that gets drummed into kids heads by virtually everyone, and you can’t tell me that’s not going to make kids with a certain attitude WANT to smoke.
Yep, Denis Leary was right when he said, " They could come in a black pack with skull and cross bones on the front - called ‘Tumors’ and you’d still have smokers lined up around the block to get them." “It’s a drug and I’m addicted, OK!?”. [/DL]
Smokers know it’s bad, but stuff like this is just annoying.
Nothing they put on the package is going to stop anyone from smoking. If you’re already a smoker, then you’re a lost cause. You know you should quit, and you might, but it certainly won’t be because of a picture on the box.
I imagine that the fact that smoking costs a fortune and you can’t do it anywhere will be far more effective in preventing kids from starting than any warnings about health concerns, however graphic. After all, kids have no concept of their own mortality, but who wants to pay six dollars a pack to stand *outside * the club?
Seems like it has a lot in common with the public health education on breastfeeding:
Everyone knows the message you are sending, you aren’t passing along new information.
People do what they want anyway.
You are pissing people off.
Plenty of people had mother’s who smoked and are just fine (including myself and two sisters and most of my friends), so there is an element of “bullshit.” (Plenty of people were formula babies are are fine, so there is an element of “bullshit” there as well.) There are lucky suckers who live to be 85 years old and don’t die terrible lung cancer deaths (my grandmother is 80 - and has been a minimum pack a day smoker since 14 - she can’t make it up stairs anymore, and we don’t expect her to live much longer, but who does when you are 80) Exaggerating your case to make a point makes all the rest of your points look less trustworthy.
Australia has a history - going back at least twenty years - of using shock value for everything from smoking to drink driving. People get saturated with these images, and they don’t work, IMHO.
In this country, the current pictorial warnings on cigarette packets are the third generation. The first was a message in tiny font “Smoking is a health hazard”, and the second, in large font, had varying messages such as “SMOKING CAUSES LUNG CANCER”, “SMOKING WHEN PREGNANT CAN HARM YOUR BABY”, and the lovely “SMOKING KILLS”. When these came out, many tobacconists gave away stickers which were the same size and typeface, and you could plaster them over the original warning. My favourite was “SMOKING AFTER SEX IS GREAT!”
It worked on me, but I don’t smoke and I never will. It’d probably work better than that diseased lung they showed me in 7th grade. I found the healthy lung picture to be just as gross.
