Monday 6 October 2008

You're Smoking?

A new anti-smoking campaign was introduced this week by English officials who are just sick and tired of seeing all those beds in hospitals go to all the whiny little cancer-sufferers. You might know that in times past the Government forced cigarette companies to put messages on every pack of fags that would put people off smoking. Things like “smoking gives you cancer”. It’s true, but the campaign hasn’t really been all that effective, and in many cases the realisation that smoking causes cancer bummed out smokers so much they needed another cigarette to calm their shattered nerves. Not anymore. The Government, in a show of their wise wisdom which comes from many many years of being morally corrupt, have started putting photos on cigarette packs that show lungs that belonged to smokers. Naturally, these lungs are black and nasty-lookin’, because for some reason cigarette companies put tar in their product (how was that ever going to help your cause, cigarette companies?). The idea, believe politicians, is that these photos will turn people off smoking.

Maybe it will. Yet what comes next? The Government has so far, gone through a pattern:

1: Slogans offering scientific facts
2: Slogans that exaggerate things in order to scare smokers.

1: Pictures offering scientific facts.
2: ?

Looking at that quickstep guide, can you guess what’s going to come next? I can’t hear what you might be saying, by the time you read this everything I’ve written is from the past, and thus I cannot hear it because to me you are from the future. Just an existential thought for you, there. The next logical step is to take pictures which are completely out of context and try to attach them to smoking.


Of course, there’s no way that you can ever stop all smokers from smoking. People are always going to do it. As it stands, smokers have to go outside whenever they want to smoke (something which is much more daunting for Brits than for people who live in the rest of the world, admittedly), they have to see pictures of dead lungs and stuff whenever they buy a pack of cigarettes, they have a lot for weight against them. Eventually the Government is going to decide that the current over-the-top photos of explosions being causes by smokers aren’t enough. They need something MOAR:


This is going to happen, believe me.

3 comments:

  1. They are already talking about doing something similar on your pint glass as well.

    But a smoker amused me the other day when he told me that he only buys the cigarettes that say "smoking kills". That's fine by him, but he doesn't want a cigarette that's going to make him "impotent" or "cause long and painful death by lung cancer" and he doesn't even care that "smoking harms others around you."

    He just wants the cigarette that's going to kill him quickest.

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  2. I think they should puts pictures of people getting hit by cars on cars.

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  3. It's now nearly a month after this idea was launched by the government but I have yet to purchase a packet with a cancer lung on them.

    I have a come up with a way around having really ugly packets like this... you buy a cigarette case and put them in there, and throw away the packet. Easy.

    Showing us cancerous lungs and rotting teeth wont stop us. We know the risk when we start, I've sat through enough health ed lessons to know this.

    I most say though my favorite "anti smoking campaign" slogan on the cig packets is "Smoking is addictive... Don't start". Well we've bought the packet now... thanks for the warning!

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