Preventative Nausea: The common cure for cigarette addiction?
The government’s newest attempt to deter smokers is literally sickening.
Via FDA.gov: “These warnings mark the first change in cigarette warnings in more than 25 years and are a significant advancement in communicating the dangers of smoking. The introduction of these warnings is expected to have a significant public health impact by decreasing the number of smokers, resulting in lives saved, increased life expectancy, and lower medical costs.”
”Placement of new warnings on cigarette packages and advertisements — starting in September 2012, the new cigarette health warnings will appear:
• on the top 50 percent of both the front and rear panels of each cigarette package.
• in the upper portion of each cigarette advertisement, occupying at least 20 percent of the area of the advertisement.”
The images are most certainly unsettling and will now be leering at you from behind the counter at your nearest corner store. There goes my weekly candy bar run at 7-11. Tell me you can choke down a Milky Way after this:
Do we really think this will work? Apparently so: Lawrence R. Deyton, director of the F.D.A. Center for Tobacco Products, said the government estimates — based on other countries’ experience — that the new warning labels will prompt an additional 213,000 Americans to quit smoking next year…
So from 46 million to 45,787,000?
This is a whole new realm of advertising we’ve never seen before for a minimal result. We’ve come a long way from 8 out of 9 dentists prefer Colgate, baby. How will this tactic perform against a substance whose addictiveness is compared to that of heroin? And what’s next? Images of shirtless obese people plastering your local fast food drive-thru? Only time will tell.
