Unfair to the businesses? They make their living out of selling toxic, addictive chemicals to the public and you're worrying about the ethical considerations of putting nasty pictures on their products??
Scare Tactics and Cigarette Labels
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Xanikk999
History junkie
No different than Alcohol which many people get "intoxicated" on. It is a little over the top I doubt it will have the effect they are hoping for. Fast food also can have a very negative chronic effect on your health. Where are the warning labels for those things?
For it to work you have to get the early smokers to think differently. That is to actually care about the long term consequences.
The difference there is that alcohol is a social past time. (It's also viewed less negatively, for whatever reason.) The only time smoking is social is when teenagers gather behind the bike sheds or adults cluster together in the howling rain to puff on a cancer stick.
Also, the only purpose of a cigarette is to sell more cigarettes and likely eventually kill you. Neither fast food nor alcohol are liable to do that in quite such an obvious fashion as smoking does and you don't get "passive eaters". (Drink driving is an entirely different subject.)
Also, the only purpose of a cigarette is to sell more cigarettes and likely eventually kill you. Neither fast food nor alcohol are liable to do that in quite such an obvious fashion as smoking does and you don't get "passive eaters". (Drink driving is an entirely different subject.)
It's unfair to the business because people will buy fewer cigarettes? That's the entire point...
Or it's unfair to the business because displaying products with ugly pictures ruin the aesthetics of the business?
Xanikk999
History junkie
I was trying to argue your latter point. It just flies in the face of a business trying to be able to compete. Ethically the requirement makes it so they have to dissuade people from using its products which is unfair.
Xanikk999
History junkie
Well then we need to do the same with other unhealthy products. I dont buy your argument for alcoholic beverages or fast food. It just seems like everyone is dogpiling the tobacco companies while other kinds of unhealthy products are left alone.
Business don't have to put the cigarettes so that customers can see the ugly pictures.
In fact, in my locale, it's illegal for businesses to display tobacco products, they have to be hidden and brought out when customers ask for them.
Xanikk999
History junkie
That's the same in the United States in some places as well. Which would make this law redundant and a waste of money. If someone asks the cashier for some cigerretes what makes you think a picture of a sickly person will dissuade them?
I guess I still havent lost my memories of what I remember teenagers doing as kids with relation to cigerretes. They didnt care that it was unhealthy and they knew it was bad for you.
Growing up with stupid teenagers who smokes, I remember the more adults told us not to do something the more we wanted to do it anyway (For most things). I was one of those who knew the dangers outweighed the risks but not everyone thinks like that.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
The thing with smoking is that 1. the media has (and continues to) portray it as "the cool thing to do".. which of course applies to drinking and fast food too, but in the case of alcohol and fast food, it is possible to consume these things moderately with little or no health risks. In fact, in the case of alcohol, a little bit here and there can actually be good for you.. and in the case of fast food, a burger here or there is not bad for you, if you lead an active lifestyle. Smoking on the other hand, is bad for you no matter what, and not only that.. it is bad for those around you.
Xanikk999
History junkie
You have good points there. I believe that people should be free from second hand smoke in public areas however that most likely wont be any less an issue because this law isn't going to be effective at all.
How effective was putting graphic warning labels on WD-40 or paint thinners effective to get people to not inhale them? Its a waste of money to enforce this law, simply put.
To encourage less smoking I would propose an insane cigerrete tax. It's already high in some places but it needs to be higher. Smoking is not so addictive that highly priced ciggerettes would not dissuade someone with financial difficulties unlike crack with crack addicts.
In my opinion it should be taxed out of moral obligation if only to lessen the strain on the economy from uninsured emergency room visits. The taxes from it could go towards helping people with lung cancer pay for treatment.
So an initiative that costs the government next to nothing and whose effectiveness is based up by studies, is stupid? I could understand it being seen as rather stupid if it didn't work (although in that case it would still not be a waste of taxpayer money or anything, because the government isn't actually paying for anything extra), but it does work.
They don't have graphic warning labels.
And I'm pretty sure WD-40 and paint thinner is neither particularly addictive, or affecting many people.
Patroklos
Deity
- Joined
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This is an absolutely HORRIBLE arguement. Smoking has been a social past time of thousands of years. Usually in conjunction with drinking. I and my fellow officers smoke a cigar on the bridge every Saturday night, is that not a social past time?
I would imagine it is, yes. I'm not trying to defend alcohol as a socially acceptable but dangerous activity, simply because it is, but smoking has no redeeming features whatsoever.
(Staying up far too late at night to post at CFC is also both social and unhealthy, but it only affects me, unless I'm stupid enough to try driving or operating heavy machinery.)
(Staying up far too late at night to post at CFC is also both social and unhealthy, but it only affects me, unless I'm stupid enough to try driving or operating heavy machinery.)
Mise
isle of lucy
There are already campaigns to promote eating healthily, and McDonald's for example has its nutritional information on the packaging, so you can see clearly how bad it is for you (i.e. what % of your RDA of fat is in a Big Mac).
And whereas fast food chains have over the years endeavoured to cut down on the amount of fats (trans and sat fats included), salt, and other nasties (just compare a Big Mac in 2010 with a Big Mac in 1990 and you'll see how much better they've become), cigarette companies aren't exactly jumping over each other for the chance to reduce the toxicity or addictiveness of their product...
No, they would just have to care about the short term consequences, such as the effect on their lungs, which is aptly demonstrated by a picture of what a smoker's lung looks like on the inside.
Add another $5/pack tax, and raise it a further dollar every year until smoking stops
I don't think that's a good idea. It shouldn't be the goal to get everyone to stop smoking. The goal should be merely to get people to think twice before starting and to help augment willpower if they want to quit.
Firstly, you already know about the black-market consequences of raising taxes on a consumable.
Secondly, it's bullying addicts for profit.
Cigarettes should be taxed to capture the externalities.
I don't know if we want people to completely stop smoking. What non-smokers don't realise is that smokers get a lot of benefit from smoking: cognitive and emotional. This really could be because our brain chemistry is a little different from each other. Now, there are consequences, but there might be a buy-now, pay-later type deal going on. Short-term benefit, coupled with an earlier death. If so, that's their choice.
My lack of sympathy for the cigarette companies is complete. It doesn't matter what 'common people' knew, they peddled death and addiction and ignorance for profit, and then lied about it as much as they could. Movies in the 80s talked about GHG-induced global warming, but that doesn't forgive the fossil fuel companies from astroturfing ignorance.
Finally, a London School of Economics has a good seminar (available via podcast) on "the Ageing Society" that really changed my thinking of the cost of smoking. It's not that a 70-year old's death is cheaper or more expensive (in total) than a 60-year old's death. It might be, it might not be. If you asked for me to pay for one of their 'last years' today, I wouldn't know which one to chose.
However, medical costs rise at about 8% per year right now. So, the real question is would your rather pay for someone's 'last year' this year or in ten years? With 8% growth, that cost could double. A smoker dying in 2010 might be more expensive than a non-smoker dying in 2010. But they're both much cheaper than a non-smoker dying in 2020.
Anyway, smokers make themselves into great guinea pigs for the cancer therapies that I'll need ~20 years later than they will. My medicine will be the off-patent success of their desperate attempts for a cure.
Dragonlord
Fantasy Warlord
What??? Tobacco was unknown in the Old World until imported from the New World (supposedly by Sir Walter Raleigh). And the Native Americans only used tobacco for cultist purposes, not as an everyday habit.
So smoking in today's sense has only been around since the 17th century, and then only as cigars and pipes for relatively few well-off people.
Smoking only became a mass phenomenon with cigarettes during and after WW1.
So, no, it hasn't been a 'social past time' or anything else for 'thousands of years'....
That would be true for alcohol, however. A new archeological theory even says that beer was the first agricultural product, even before bread
