Now see here all you bloody smoking bastards. They have just about had enough of you and your pathetic, juvenile, surly insolence. Why can’t you seem to get it through your amazingly thick skulls that this sort of thing just is not on?
They have tried to be reasonable. They have tried to be understanding. But, oh no, that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? Well, here’s a news flash for you, chummy: the party is over. Their patience is at an end. The ‘good cop’ routine has not worked, so its time to send in the ‘bad cops’. Yes, that’s right. The gloves are finally coming off:
Pictures of diseased organs and rotting teeth could feature on cigarette packets under new government plans.
Similar pictures appear in Canada, Thailand, Brazil and Singapore – now a public consultation will be held on whether to introduce them in the UK.
“We need to continue with fresh, hard-hitting ideas, providing more information that will help smokers quit,” Health Secretary John Reid said.
And if that does not force you to quit, well, then they are just going to have to break out the Celine Dion records and play them on a loop until you damn well come to your senses.
Don’t make them do it!
Rotting Teeth?
What’s the big deal? Thought those were the standard in the UK?
😉
Interesting, and you know…they don’t make me smoke any less either…or my lady either. I enjoy sitting down with my pipe and smoking it in a public place too. Ofcourse the air where I live is generally more toxic then the stuff coming out of the pipe I’m smoking. Especially with those large coal fired power plants spewing pollution on top of the big steel refineries.
More on the interesting side, the government censured a study done in Southern Ontario a few years ago, in the Hamilton area that showed that the smokers live on average 7 years longer then the non-smokers. The reason they figured was the tar in the cigs was coating their lungs, similar to the old welders lungs…and how most welders smoke to keep themselfs from getting sick.
I find the idea of trying to ‘scare’ people rather silly, help them stop or don’t but don’t try scaring them. Damnest odd thing of all, they make the compaines put the labels on, and yet they don’t increase any money into helping people quit. Heh. So much for socialized medicine.
Heh. The only thing those pictures will do is cause cigarette cases to come back into style.
Interesting rant. You stay in the UK. I’ll stay in the US. (lights up a cigarette)
“rotting organs” …. they’re going to show images of The Guardian and The Observer on cigarette packs???
oh wait, maybe they mean the BBC …
They’ve been doing it here in Singapore since about 2-3 years back. They’d show a scene of the smoke entering a person’s lungs, and then somebody cutting open the organ to have several streams of black substance leak out. Presumably, that’s tar.
And there’s the throat one, and…
Well, you get the idea. Hell, on some roads here, parts of the road are marked out near pedestrian corssings, and the rectangular area labelled with the words “This is the amount of tar you will consume in 3 years of smoking”, or something like that. I can get a shot with my digicam if you wish. It has to be seen to be believed.
Then there are the bus adverts with smoke forming a noose around a boy’s neck, with the words “Do you wish to have your family suffer?”
I could go on and on, but you guys get the idea. The government is trying all sorts of methods to get people to stop smoking, from raising taxes on cigarettes, to banning them in certain places. But according to local statistics, more young people are taking up smoking, at least before the shock factor ads were unleashed as their latest weapon. Heh.
However, it’s true that some people really cannot take smoke. During the Christmas period, I was with some friends from the choir in a cafe, and we were surrounded by smokers. The girls were irate with the smoke that’s whiffing about. I didn’t mind much, because although I’m not a smoker, I’m just used to it after serving in the military.
So, what is it about smoking in public places? Disregarding the medical studies of the dangers of second hand smoke(I rather thought those a crock), whose rights take precedence? The smoker, or the people around him who might be offended by smoke? The same argument goes for people who indulge in noise pollution, loud talking, etc. Who gets to leave, the smoker or the people who are irritated by his smoking?
The Wobbly Guy
I suggest putting etiher:
pictures of stalins russia
OR pictures of a fully grown man in a nappy (nanny state)
on every potential labour vote.
I’m not worried about the health factors of second hand smoke, but I really dislike the smell. A well-mannered smoker does not subject others to it.
I’m with Michael. The smell has always irritated me ever since I was a kid, and it bothers me even more now since my mother died of cancer from the vile things last year. It’s a really impolite habit.
As far as the ads go, well, here in Canada they’ve been standard for a few years already with little effect. Some smokers like my uncle even collect those pictures for fun.
I’m all in favour of increasing awareness of the dangers, but there comes a point where you just have to give up and accept the fact that people will make their own decisions, and sometimes make bad ones.
Oh wait, I forgot that telling the government to let people do what they want is like telling malaria parasites to please stop trying to kill you.
Rob read: Don’t joke. They could do it.
It might put us off–just as the organ-pictures are designed by non-smokers to give themselves a shiver of self-righteous disgust–but those things are calculated to appeal to proper Labour voters. If you want to suppress the socialist vote you have to do something subtler, such as removing from ballot-papers the party symbols that were so recently adopted on the african model to gather the non-English-reading and plain illiterate to the poll.
Rob
What is really needed is Gulag pictures on the Guardian and on TV licences.
They’re planning this in Australia, too. I blogged about it last week sometime. Click!(Link)
Now here’s another one :
how’bout they legalize weed and sell it in packs featuring extremely high, goofy people… what a riot
by the way, this picture thingy is an investment in the future. Imagine in 10 or more yrs folks collecting those packs, trading them, selling them on ebay – like old comic books or post stamps… hillarious