The Atlantic has a piece about Australia’s new cigarette boxes:
As part of the landmark tobacco regulation bill President Obama signed in 2009, Congress required cigarette makers to set aside half the space on each of their packages for health warnings. Then last June, the FDA unveiled its own set of nine gruesome labels designed to cover half of each cigarette package (examples to the right). They included graphic images of diseased lungs, a cadaver with staples running down its chest, and a smoker with tracheotomy hole, along with slogans such as “Smoking Can Kill You” and “Cigarettes Are Addictive.
Suffice to say, the tobacco companies have been fighting tooth and nail to avoid being forced to slap pictures of dead bodies onto their products. But so far, they’ve only had mixed success.
The industry notched a big win this past February, when a district court judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the new labels were extreme enough to be considered a violation of the companies’ First Amendment rights. Just as it protects us from being silenced, the constitution also protects us from being compelled to speak. And by turning cigarette packages into “mini-billboards” for an anti-smoking campaign, Judge Richard Leon reasoned that the government was violating the tobacco companies right to silence.
You may recall one of my earliest posts on NaPP addressing this subject. For those who would prefer not quick through, the main themes were that these warnings do not contain information that we do not already know, and the result of these warnings is simply that people will start getting box-covers. If I am still smoking when these things are instituted, if they are, I will get one first thing.
Meanwhile, people will likely be confronted with these images every time they go to a convenience store. Besides the implications for speech (essentially forcing what is a political message onto cigarette backs), that’s one of the things I find most agitating. I hope to quit. When I do quit, I don’t want to see this crap. The only upside is that it might force convenience stores to keep the boxes behind counters and out of view. That would be a net positive, though I’m not sure we couldn’t do that without the visual pollution being advocated here.
Honestly, if we’re going to change the boxes, the most prudent thing to do might be to standardize them and make them as plain as humanly possibly. It is rare the cigarette box that truly captures my attention, but sometimes it happens. Mavericks used to have this visually stunning black-and-gold box. It’s probably not a coincidence that I gave them a try. Nor is it likely a coincidence I gave USA Gold, which also has a reasonably good looking box, a shot. The number of relatively generic brands are legion, but those are the one I picked (and stuck with them because they are a good value). Jamming those signals might not be a bad idea.
One of the things they did do was force makers to move away using words like “light” and “ultra-light.” This may have actually had a beneficial effect, mostly by causing confusion. By and large, red still means full-flavor, gold means light, and silver means ultra-light. The brands that weren’t already aligned with this color scheme suffered, though. As did brands like Marlboro, which had more than the three of four customary strengths/flavors.
Canada been putting cancer porn on ciggie packs for awhile now. Made me want to double up my habit just to give my finger to their nanny state.
I did finally quit after my accident this year since I was only semi-conscious for the first week, the hard part. But it was really hard to stick with it because I’m a rebel. The look of disgust on the faces of neo-Puritan leftist scum was easily as satisfying as the cigarette itself.
But to continue smoking would have been self-immolation, like those Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire now and then to prove some point about freedom and tyranny and all.
I’m not a Buddhist either, but props where they’re due—those dudes got some serious libertarian game.
http://gawker.com/5746683/buddhist-monk-could-serve-jail-time-under-bhutans-anit+smoking-law
I’ve mentioned it before, but I do wonder when the tobacco companies will start lobbying for pot legalization so that they have a product that isn’t on the run.
Here’s the thing, though: those images? They’re not for you. They’re for the kids.
Adults, in general, don’t start smoking; kids do. They’re lured by the coolness of it; the pretty branding; the peer pressure. Remove those factors (eww, that’s gross! Why would I want one of these in my mouth!?), and your stream of new smokers is reduced proportionally.
At least, that’s the theory. If it pans out, I expect a decrease in the uptake of underage smoking in Australia over the next couple of years.
Fair point, though they really missed the mark with the eyeball. Sixteen year old Trumwill would have thought that pretty cool. (I didn’t start smoking until later.)
I think this is where stripping boxes of designs might be helpful. This might go so far as to be counterproductive. Or maybe it’ll work.
I sincerely hope for the latter. A quick search through Pubmed shows: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7804500
That is, in general, the earlier one starts smoking, the more one smokes. The ‘loosies’ turn into packets when they get older.
Ideal scenario: the prohibition is cultural, rather than legal, and the coolness factor of cigarettes wears off and becomes instead a social stigma. Smoking eventually dies out, and then economies collapse because they can’t afford the state pension for all the extra elderly 😉
That was one of the major impetuses (impeti?) for increasing tobacco taxes. Studies showed that young folks were more price sensitive than adults, so higher costs were an effective deterrent. That’s been one of the primary causes of the decline in smoking in the U.S., higher costs resulting in fewer young kids starting and getting addicted.
And as fewer people smoke, it causes further crowding out, as more and more people refuse to be in its vicinity. There’s a very fuzzy line between those fir whom this is a personal choice that is increasingly a common part of the culture and the neo-puritan leftist scum TVD mentions.
Those are the same neo-puritan scum whose sexual immorality is destroying our culture, right?
Ideal scenario: the prohibition is cultural, rather than legal, and the coolness factor of cigarettes wears off and becomes instead a social stigma.
That’s already happened, hasn’t it?
Among some demographics, but not among others.
I’m still surprised when I see people smoking. I’m like, “Wait, people under 50 still do that? People under 30 still do that?!?!” Then I remember the bubble I’m in.
My view that the shifting attitude towards cigarettes (particularly the acceleration of the shift) is related to the increasing class distinctions of smoking is not a popular one, but I believe it quite genuinely.
I think many young educated people don’t do it because they know the risks. Many others dn’t do it because it’s something stupid poor people do. And they don’t want to be associated with the latter.
I don’t think it’s as much a conscious thing as a circumstantial and unconscious thing. People who know people who smoke are more likely to smoke. They’re more likely to think it’s something that normal people do and not just other people. People that, as you point out, we don’t aspire to be like or to associate with.
So, in the same way that the Marlboro Man sold cigarettes in ways that people don’t fully appreciate, the average current smoker… doesn’t.
But I think that is largely one way…
Do smokers look down their nose at non-smokers? I’m not talking about resentment or embitterment about the increasing frequency with which the latter marginalizes the former… I mean do they actually carry themselves with a sense of superiority because they DO smoke? Because I certainly know folks who don’t smoke that do that.
For me, I never really got into smoking. Tried it a bit when I was young and mostly just got a headache and woke up the next morning hacking. Plus the price (I hit 18 right around when prices really started to jump)… egads the price! I’ll still have the occasional cigar and if I feel like having a particularly weird, drunken night, I’ll bum one or two. But almost all my friends were smokers in high school, so I knew a lot, at least then. And my dad smokes, though much less than he used to. But even I fall victim to, “Oh, he must be one of THOSE people,” when I see someone my age smoking. And most of my current non-smoking friends are worse.
Huh. I basically don’t know anyone who smokes (to my knowledge). I used to have a Russian coworker who smoked, I think.
Of my recent co-workers who smoke, almost all are originally from outside the US.
Although there are these candy-flavored cigars that seem to be popular among high-schoolers.
A couple jobs back, the smoking dock was the epitome of social equality. A VP smoking next to a developer next to a dockworker. That was about the time all of the bans were going in full-force. Half of the gang quit. By the end it was blue collar crew, me, a German, a Chinese, and a Japanese.
It was a little bit different at the large software company in the pacific northwest. The vast majority of those I remember were American in a building staffed with a large number of H1B’s. Or maybe I remember the Americans because those were the ones I mostly talked to.
No, not really. I mean, since a majority of people don’t smoke, all smokers know people and are likely good friends with people who don’t smoke in a way that the inverse isn’t true.
Before I smoked I was criticized once for being a non-smoker by a girlfriend who was very prone to criticism. Even then, it was the larger pattern of behavior. Not “All the cool kids smoke, dude” as much as “Of course you don’t smoke, you sanctimonious, uptight jackass.”
Ahhhh, yes, yes, yes. Like any other minority group, smokers are almost forced to understand the ways of and interact with non-smokers. Non-smokers, as the majority group, can neatly cut themselves off. Plus, drawing a line between non-smokers and smokers is a bit inaccurate, since even the heaviest of smokers spends at least a portion of their day as a non-smoker.
And, Will, you ARE a sanctimonious, uptight jackass, regardless of whether you smoke. I’m pretty sure that is a requirement to post here. :-p
Oh good grief. As if no adult was ever a teen themselves and have no clue how they think. Like a scary picture by any authority would bother you. In Canada, one of the first for such things, kids traded them like baseball cards. But IF it’s true that “most” start before age 18 and considering the apprehension of being carded should a minor try to buy one at a store (that then reduces the number that get their cigarettes by buying a pack at a store) then stop fooling yourselves with this feel-good crap because minors bum single cigarettes from here and there. Few are rarely holding a pack. I should add that since time immemorial minors smoking in public has always drawn frowns, incurring the habit of “sneaking a smoke” where no one can see them. Ergo, minors smoke way less than a pack even a week! Which, as an aside, brings up the issue of tax — another laughable feel-good measure. Minors have the most expendable cash. IF they were to buy a pack what’s $10 a pack if you’re only spending that much once a week?? Or if buying “loosies” cost them, let’s say, $1.00 each. Again, what’s $2 a day?? Let me put the ribbon on my point…. “For the children” is the exploitation of the children (and have recently begun to include adults from 18 to 26 in their “children” count) by intolerants who are simply after Prohibition.
Wait… cigarettes WON’T get me laid tonight?!?!
[storms off]
John, cancel the frickin’ order! Apparently we’re going to have to get ourselves laid the old fashioned way.
…with alcohol.
Or being in a band. How else do you explain generations of “musicians” who can’t read music?
No, I meant the old OLD fashioned way…
Aren’t you getting a bit old for clubbing?
…some woman over the head and drag her by the hair back to your cave?
Now THAT is what I meant!