I'm not a cigarette smoker, but I think I will have to start buying packs of smokes to collect all of these...

BLOT: (21 Jun 2011 - 01:24:08 PM)

I'm not a cigarette smoker, but I think I will have to start buying packs of smokes to collect all of these...

If I was not a cynic, I would say that the FDA's plan to introduce graphic images and messages to cigarette packaging and advertisement was an earnest desire to show off the ill effects of smoking. I am a cynic though so to me it is an attempt to force stores to hide cigarette displays (now that the packages have to have half their front and half their back taken up by the images), to make magazines unwilling to run adverts (adverts have to dedicated 20% of the space to the images), and to force smokers to carry around distasteful visual displays while outside. The latter will fail because of cigarette cases, roll-your-owns, and because frankly, many smokers are already semi- or fully-pariahed when smoking in public anyhow. The middle is sort of doomed to failure because I'm under the impression that cig adverts are basically a thing of the past. The first one, though, effectively forcing stores to hide cig displays will have some impact. Still, if that's your goal then you should probably just man up and show some balls. If you don't want magazines to run adverts, just disallow it. Giving people "choice" by making one of the alternatives distasteful stinks of passive aggressiveness. In fact, this whole things seems to be a parody of government action. Too bad it's hosted on a federal site and it's not April Fool's Day.

Personally, I bet non-smoking sorts are going to go out and buy the packs now as "collector's items". I plan on buying one of each and keeping those around for a while.

The FDA has already shown a complete knuckleheadedness in regards to the topic anyhow. I won't dig up a bullet list of claims (things like keeping accelerants in cigarettes but putting additional flame retardants on top, and the FDA's ignoring of the effect of many additional chemicals and just blanket statementing that it call comes down to the tobacco), but I'll link to this: Ten Reasons Why FDA Cigarette Regulation is Bad News. I don't agree with all of the points there, but it shows the problem of what happens when a government agency does a good thing (cutting down on smoking) no matter what the cost (making a product more dangerous, despite statistics being in complete disagreement, attacking things like clove cigarettes for causing young smokers). Ah, well. C'est la vie.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: June 2011