From The Boston Globe Editorial:
Smoking: your brain will look like this
Stores that sell cigarettes in Massachusetts should also have to show the harm that tobacco does to the human body. And the more vividly, the better — rotted teeth, tar-pit lungs, and so on.
While scientists may debate the cancer-causing effects of many plastics and pesticides, there is no debate over the role of smoking in cancer, heart disease, strokes, emphysema, and other illnesses. For that reason, state public health officials want to require the display of graphic posters showing the havoc that cigarette smoke wreaks on blood vessels, lungs, and other organs. The state’s Public Health Council should approve the initiative, which mirrors a similar effort in New York City.
Granted, the new posters will not be an adornment. But decades-old warnings on cigarette packs have lost the power to persuade. In contrast, dramatic illustrations hit home even with immigrants who do not read English well. About 16 percent of adults in the state still light up, but officials hope the photos, along with posters that steer smokers to cessation programs, will bring that number down. Since 2006, anti-smoking programs have been virtually free to state residents on Medicaid. In just two years, the availability of such programs cut the smoking rate among the state’s poor by more than a quarter.
Sigh.
Is there anyone in the civilized world that does not know that smoking is harmful to their health?
You’d have to machete your way through a remote rain forest to discover some stone-age tribe that wears nothing except for sharpened sticks through their cheeks, while bathing in yak piss, to find a person ignorant of its effects.
Perhaps we should also put pictures of a penis that has an outbreak of crusty, oozing herpes sores next to the condom display.
I love this line:
“In contrast, dramatic illustrations hit home even with immigrants who do not read English well.”
If they can’t read what the picture is about, then maybe they’ll think the areas highlighted in red mean smoking these things will make you smarter and “strong like bull!”
Another good one:
“Since 2006, anti-smoking programs have been virtually free to state residents on Medicaid. In just two years, the availability of such programs cut the smoking rate among the state’s poor by more than a quarter”.
Uhh. Maybe the drop in smoking among the poor has more to do with the fact that a carton of cigarettes costs as much as a used car now.
Massachusetts should be fenced in as one gigantic penal colony for the insane.
