How Smokers Think about Death
Graphic Warnings May Not Work
Smoke, Choke, Croak: Any Questions?
2012 Required Graphic Cigarette Labeling
In the first major change to Cigarette packaging in a quarter-century, the Food and Drug Administration will require graphic Warning Labels that cover half a package's front and rear and the top 20% of all Cigarette ads. The U. S. will join dozens of nations around the world in labeling cigarette packages with large photographs of diseased organs, amputated limbs and other gruesome images. By Oct. 22, 2012, manufacturers will no longer be able to distribute cigarettes for sale in the United States that do not display the new warnings, which will be updated as needed.
People to be Reminded of Their Own Mortality
The labels will feature either drawings or photos illustrating graphically the dangers associated with smoking and will be accompanied by text stating that smoking is addictive or that it kills. Previous research has indicated when people see images of cigarette-induced ailments; they are reminded of their own mortality. However, a study presented in May annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science suggests reminders of mortality might not always have the desired effect.
Grim, Ugly Pictures
The pictures feature such things as a diseased lung, a corpse, and a man smoking a cigarette through a tracheotomy tube. They are not quite as grim as some used in other countries, but regulators hope they will be sufficiently frightening to keep young people from beginning to smoke and to strengthen the will of those who are attempting to quit.
Does this kind of approach works when it comes to actually getting people to stop smoking? (Some research suggests it may be counterproductive for certain smokers.)
May Not Have Intended Effect
James Arndt, a psychologist at the University of Missouri, had students smokers complete questionnaires designed to induce either thoughts of their own mortality, or thoughts about failing an exam. Then the researchers offered the students a cigarette and measured every person’s smoking intensity – each puff’s volume, flow, and duration. Students who did not smoke often smoked with less passion after being reminded of their own mortality, as compared with the light smokers who read about failing an exam. As Arndt explains, the infrequent smokers may have been responding to thoughts of death by trying to reduce their own vulnerability. But heavy smoking students reacted to thoughts of death by taking even heavier drags on their cigarettes. Arndt suggests the students might have been subconsciously attempting to dispel a negative mood with an enjoyable activity.
Other researchers also suggest regulators may want to rethink this ashes-to-ashes theme. New research by Jochim Hansena, Susanne Winzelerb and Sascha Topolinskic
New York University, Department of Psychology, suggests that, for a certain set of smokers, those allusions to death may actually increase the likelihood they will light up.
Terror Management Theory
When the death makes you smoke: A terror management perspective on the effectiveness of cigarette on-pack warnings…
Based on terror management theory, the present study investigates the impact of mortality-salient warnings on cigarette packages compared to warnings with no mortality threat. Results suggest that to the degree that smoking is a source of self-esteem, later attitudes towards smoking become more positive if the warning message is mortality-salient. On the contrary, if the warning is terrifying but not mortality-salient and relates to the source of self-esteem, smoking attitudes become more negative with higher smoking-based self-esteem. Thus, mortality-salient warnings may increase the tendency to favor smoking under certain circumstances. This fatal ironic effect highlights the importance of a risk communication that matches the self-esteem contingencies of the recipients, and it has urgent implications for health care policy.
Therefore, graphic warning labels on cigarettes might not have the intended effect on everyone who sees them.
Related Article:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Smoke-Choke-Croak-Radioactive-Cigarettes
Smokers: Help or Hurt Stop Smoking?
Comments
AUTHORjustmesuzanne,
Some "young people are fatalistic," but so were we... An example: Mark Twain (AKA Samuel Clemins)stated "...When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Perhaps each generation is just different. Not better, not worse, just different.
Thanks for your comments!
I think so many people - especially young people - are fatalistic about the future of the world today, anyway that the idea of guarding health seems insignificant. Good info! Voted up and interesting! :)
- AUTHOR
Fear based learning is not productive, nor effective. Smokers must "buy-in" to a perceived benefit...
smokers know the dangers - the warnings can end up being patronizing to them, the ostracization from public places makes smokers feel like lepers and social pariahs so they get stressed out and need their nicotine more - it's counter-productive
- AUTHOR
tonymac04,
Your comments are valid. Education is a key component. My concern, the "curriculum" should be valid...
I think Dahogland made a valid point - if people know what the effects of cigarette smoking can be they would perhaps think twice about starting. Once started it is very, very difficult to stop.
I have seen too many people die from the completely unnecessary effects of tobacco smoke, and the deaths they died were horrible, painful and undignified.
The question of freedom raised by onegoodwoman have to be balanced with the public health issues. The effects of smoking on public health are well known, as are the effects of riding a motorbike without a helmet or driving a car without a seat belt. Doing these safety things seems to me a small price to pay for the benefits to oneself and others. The degree of infringement of rights is negligable compared with the benefits.
Safety is promoted by for example not drinking and driving. Is it an infringement of rights to stop people driving under the influence? Or talking, or even worse, texting, on cell phone while driving. I can choose to do these things but then I have to be accountable for the consequences, which might include someone else being killed.
As for the awareness of one's own mortality, I think that is a very important issue which somehow the religious people try to deny - accept this or that teaching and you will live forever. That is a lie - no-one lives forever and we should all be aware that we are mortal. The unreal hope of immortality is deadly. Whether or not these warnings will help us stay aware of our mortality I don't know. I do know that the effects of smoking, like the other dangerous things, should always be kept in people's minds somehow.
Thanks for sharing this important Hub.
Love and peace
Tony
- AUTHOR
If the results are what appears at "first glance" via recent studies, the results of government required packaging may have unintended consequences and smokers inhale more deeply with longer durations... as current studies indicate when smokers have seen the gruesome pictures on cigarette packages...
The opposite results may occur! More deaths, more suffering, more health costs...
It no doubt won't
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- AUTHOR
katiem2,
The "added chemicals" produce perceived benefits to the cigarette manufacturers...
Smoking is addictive. Coffee is addictive. Alcohol can be addictive... Pot smoking can be addictive... Internet usage can be addictive...
I am not qualified to propose a solution for the cigarette health issues...
I question if the new, improved "packaging" will produce the intended results of smokers smoking less...
I agree smokers are not going to be helped by such images and it's just mean as those who love smokers will be more affected and alarmed as they worry about their loved ones who smoke enough already. Smoking is a tragic addiction and that's the real problem, why can't it just be tobaccoo without all those dreaded chemicals added? Good topic, well done!
- AUTHOR
Perhaps you are correct. Other people die, other people get sick, other people kill nearby people with their smoke...
I think also that people get used to seeing the warnings and scary pictures and just do not register them anymore. Also we all think that things can never happen to us, so will just push any uncomfortable facts away and not really process them. Interesting hub
- AUTHOR
GeneralHowitzer,
Great comment. As a non-smoker, I have no idea of the challenge you have... Seems if people are THAT "hooked" on something that can kill you, certainly harm you and others... science could come up with a win/win solution... for the "hooked consumers." If the demand is gone, production of cigarette products will disappear. I know, way too simplistic when marijuana and illegal drugs in general drive huge economies with attached crimes...
No easy answers... Who pays?
The psychological ramifications are HUGE...
Psychologically, you're in for a treat when you quit smoking. Nicotine addiction gradually beats smokers down. Most of smokers spend years tied to a habit smokers desperately wish they could rid ourselves of. Smokers feel weak and powerless and that leads to a slow destruction of self-esteem, usually so gradual they don't realize what's happening. It's no wonder that so many long-term smokers suffer from anxiety and depression.
We all have the ability to make changes in our thinking that will bring lasting freedom from nicotine addiction.
People who miss smoking years later have not let go of the associations they had with their habit, and usually think of smoking in a romantic light. They might even tell themselves subconsciously ( or conciously!) that quitting was a sacrifice. They quit smoking because they needed to, but they loved smoking. That kind of faulty thinking will keep the chains of addiction in place. But make no mistake, it is their thoughts that hold them prisoner, not cigarettes.
Have you ever had a relationship go sour because of a change in attitude on your part? A shift occurs in your perception, and once your mind turns that corner, there's no going back. It is similar with addiction. Once smokers get clear of the physical need for cigarettes, what is left is a mental relationship with smoking, much of which is based on ritual. The habit of smoking is powerful, but reprogrammable. Add some education about nicotine addiction and support from people who are going through what you are, and you'll find your way out of the maze.
Great Hub... I am a big smoker until now and I am holding my ground in eradicating it... Dependency on cigarettes is uphill battle.
Indeed it is more of psychological and self esteem and grim warning will not work.
Thanks for the share my friend...
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- AUTHOR
DreadPirate,
Thanks for your valid comments!
Stay tuned.,..
Until they ban smoking and take cigarettes off the shelves people will smoke. Even if they do take them off the shelves, people will seek cigarettes off the street. If the government truly wants people to stop smoking they will stop wasting time and money on rediculous ads and cigarette packaging and warnings and put that money toward a free stop smoking program. I have smoked for over twenty years, have tried to stop with the help of nicotiene gum and pacthes, nothing worked. I'm sure the majority of people would stop if there was a free way to do so. No one wants to die a horrible cancer related death, but for smokers who have smoked for years the pictures won't help. I will smoke even if they put a dead person on the pack and tell me I WILL die if I smoke. I am addicted and no picture can change that. I will research further to find out just how much money has been wasted by the government on signs and packaging mandates etc to see if in fact they could have taken that money and created a stop smoking program available for the pubic. Stop smoking aids are exensive and low success rates. As a regular financially struggling citizen, I am going to spend my 6 dollars on a pack of cigarettes and not fifty (or more) for a stop smoking aid that won't work and I'm back at the store shortly after to get a pack anyway.
My point is that scary pictures and warnings will not work. It has been a fact for a long time that cigarettes cause cancer along with a list if other health issues. It has not chaned. Honestly, I think warnings are a blind attempt to show that governing bodies are trying to do something and prove that they are worth their paychecks. I'm sure we have all done something at work to make it appear that we were doing something when all the while we were doing nothing at all.
- AUTHOR
glassvisage,
Thanks for your comments. Education is a key component to smokers awareness of the dangers of smoking and perhaps another reason not to smoke...
This is actually very good information to me. I am very interested in tobacco and smoking cessation, and while the findings make sense, I would not have thought of that. Please visit my website to learn more about how to educate people about the dangers of tobacco: www.tobaccofreesj.com
- AUTHOR
Thanks!
Interesting information
Thanks
- AUTHOR
World-Traveler,
The cigarette smokers would argue: "It is my life, I should be able to smoke if I want."
An analogy is the motorcycle helmet law in California: You must wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle. Some motorcyclist would argue it is their life and they should have the right to kill/harm themselves... when, or if they have an "accident."
Who pays for them? Most hospital wards of quadriplegic patients are from motorcycle wrecks.
I understand the government's role in contemplating requiring cigarette manufacturer's packaging with displays that would lessen consumer use of cigarettes, but I question the wisdom to implement a program that is not backed by research...
Which begs the question: Outlaw smoking and their tobacco products. End of story.... Or, add more taxes to all tobacco products to pay for the care of the addicted consumer...
I am always amazed to see that governments allow the legalization of cigarettes.
Doctors I teach English to say when tax revenues from cigarettes sales are compared to the cost for cigarette related illnesses to the government for health care, the payoff isn't worth it.
- AUTHOR
dawnM,
In regard to ingredients (stuff) Added to cigarettes:
Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds and 400 other toxins. These include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.
For the first time, an American tobacco company has begun listing long-secret ingredients contained in its cigarettes directly on the label. Yesterday, Liggett Group Inc. introduced cartons that the company plans to begin using that list the ingredients in its L&M cigarettes, including molasses, phenylacetic acid and the oil of the East Indian mint called patchouli. The move comes as the state of Massachusetts is trying to compel disclosure of all ingredients by all cigarette makers, an effort that other major tobacco companies are fighting.
Liggett, which broke with the industry by signing the first settlements ever with states and private attorneys suing it, supports the Massachusetts effort as well. "Liggett believes that its adult consumers have a right to full disclosure," Liggett head Bennett S. LeBow said in a statement. Along with blended tobacco and water, the 26-item L&M list includes high fructose corn syrup, sugar, natural and artificial licorice flavor, menthol, artificial milk chocolate and natural chocolate flavor, valerian root extract, molasses and vanilla extracts, and cedarwood oil. Less familiar additives include glycerol, propylene glycol, isovaleric acid, hexanoic acid and 3-methylpentanoic acid.
Nicotine is highly addictive. Smoke containing nicotine is inhaled into the lungs, and the nicotine reaches your brain in just six seconds.
While not as serious as heroin addiction, addiction to nicotine also poses very serious health risks in the long run.
As noted earlier:
Smoke, choke, croak! Imagine paying someone to be harmed, to die... and to hurt others... While the cigarette companies manipulate the "duped" smokers to enjoy and pay more for it...
- AUTHOR
oceansnsunsets,
Since you enjoy philosophy: How do you feel about people's right to smoke? How should pay for the cost of people smoking?
While trends in cigarette smoking and sales have declined in the U.S. for the past decade, sales of non-cigarette tobacco products have been on the rise. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, led by Professor Gregory N. Connolly, director of the Tobacco Control Research Program at HSPH, and Hillel Alpert, research associate in the program, sought to compare trends in sales of all tobacco products in the U.S. and found that 30% of the recent decline in cigarette sales may be offset by the robust sale of small cigars, snuff and roll-your-own products. Thus, the apparent magnitude of overall decline in tobacco use in the U.S. may be illusory. The comparative research of tobacco sales of all kinds across the past decade is published in the June 11, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It is the first study to examine concurrent sales of cigarettes and other tobacco products.
Since 1998, tobacco sales in the U.S. have declined by 2% a year, which has been hailed as an indicator that smoking itself is on the decline. Overall, cigarette sales declined 18% from 21.1 billion packs in 2000 to 17.4 billion packs in 2007. During the same interval sales of other tobacco products increased by 1.10 billion cigarette pack equivalents (CPE's) an estimate based on the products' tobacco and nicotine content (714 million moist snuff, 256 million roll-your-own tobacco, 130 million small cigars). Figures were obtained from The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and from The Tax Burden on Tobacco report. Nicotine ratings were obtained from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health filed by tobacco manufacturers under Massachusetts law.
"Cigarette companies are responding to the changing pattern of consumption," write the researchers, "by entering other tobacco markets, including acquisition of major U.S. moist snuff manufacturer Conwood by R.J. Reynolds, and by marketing new snuff and snus products to attract new smokers and new tobacco users." Snus is a moist tobacco powder placed under the upper lip.
"Cigars, roll-your-own and smokeless tobacco products are generally priced lower than cigarettes," they write. "The weekly cost for a typical user of a premium moist-snuff brand is 55% less than for a typical cigarette smoker. State and federal cigarette taxation policies appear to have been effective in reducing smoking, but small cigars and roll-your-own tobacco are taxed at 5% to 10% the rate of cigarettes, resulting in prices much less than an equivalent pack of cigarettes. These findings should be considered in future policy decisions meant to curb smoking."
Bottom-line:
More needs to be done. Until cigarette products are banned, there will be smokers. Who pays for smoker's health issues and problems?
Hi Dallas, great informative article giving both sides. Of course, it would help if the cigarette company would stop adding the chemicals to nicotine which is even worse than the nicotine itself. My dad died from the effects of smoking, so I am completely against cigarettes and smoking, we call them death sticks in our home.
Dallas, very interesting insight on this topic. I always wondered about the extent of the effects of such adds, vs. people really quitting smoking.
- AUTHOR
MartieCoetser
Thanks for your comments!
Darlene Sabella,
Your passion is appreciated. Great article.
Diffugere_nives,
Smoking is not as kool as it used to be. There are beaches off limits, cities where public smoking is prohibited. It is gradually becoming more restricted...
Like most of you have said no one can change the mind of the smoker but the smoker. England has had these labels on cigarettes for some time now, however you can also get fake stickers and packet holders with joke labels and pictures to cover them. These fake ones look 'cool' the others tend to put a few off. I have noticed that slightly more of the teenagers in the area see smoking as being ridiculous because you can't do anything. I don't know about the US but here smokers can't smoke inside except their own homes and personal vehicles and are left with being completed separated from those around them most of the time, this more than the pictures seems to put people off. Also children are taught in school as young as six about the devastating effects of smoking the kids come out and demand the parent stops and the child uses the pictures and phrases on the packets as back up, who can blame them. Great hub.
Oh my dear friend you MUST read my hub, are people still smoking...OMG yes please do for me. This is excellent and now the young people are picking it up again, this battle moves up and down based on a new generation and I think they are making them more addicting to keep that momeny coming it. Excellent hub, rate up up thank you
I have to agree with onegoodwoman. But yes, perhaps the negative promotion on packets of cigarettes may be a successful doctrine. The rebel without course, will, of course, not be indoctrinated. Please do not stop advocating the dangers of nicotine addiction. Then, at the end of the day, nobody dying because of smoking will enjoy half a chance to blame anybody else but himself/herself.
- AUTHOR
dahoglund,
It seems the social acceptance and being "kool" has changed. The Marlborough man was a stereotype man that was virile and the women wanted him...
Sorry about the smoking after effects... Our health is one of the most important things we take for granted.
Of course you did not know back in the day of the health issues and how cigarette smoking could/would effect your health.
We learn. Which is the point of this article: With our knew knowledge of the bad influences and side effects from smoking, the governments attempt to "help" us by changing the packaging labels to include graphic indicators... may not be effective. In fact may cause people to smoke more...
- AUTHOR
onegoodwoman,
I appreciate you input. A dialog includes the freedom to express oneself. Thanks for the kinds words. Your warm heart shows!
I don't know if I would have started smoking if things were like they are today. Back in the 1950's it seemed that most men smoked and it was accepted. It was a custom in the military."the smoking lamp is lit" was the announcement for a break.
I haven't smoked since the early eighties and it has affected my health,but quitting was not an easy thing to do. Now there is much more aid in order to do that.
Perhaps " my passions" took hold, and I ran free........
I thank you for your indulgence.........my
voice on YOUR hub.
A friend, that I will not hold in disregard......
Feel free to come to me, in your time.......when you too, must speak........
You shall have voice on my forum..
- AUTHOR
saddlerider1,
"Smoking is probably the most addictive substance on our planet,everyone knows it causes death..."
I agree.
Marijuana seems to be slowly accepted for "medicinal purposes" state-by-state...
If you got 'em smoke 'em....
As stated above, the scope of this article is narrowly focused on the new labeling of cigarette packaging. The new labels may have the reverse intended effect/affect.
- AUTHOR
onegoodwoman,
I want your honest statements. We both are agreeing... Smoking packaging, per the above article is going to have a new label. I am not sure the new labels will achieve what the government wants, and apparently what the public wants: stop smoking.
Your passion is appreciated. We need the full range and spectrum of those who are passionate, those who do not seem to care and those who are not informed. We need whatever, whoever differing needs to come to a consensus...
Simply mandating new labels seems to create a deeper chasm of misunderstanding and perhaps an opposite effect of what the public/governmental wants...
The merits of those that smoke and those that do not smoke is not a concern of this article. It is a debate that I am not qualified to render a judgement at this time...
The "ills of society" are beyond the scope of those who choose to smoke, or this article.... It consist of many "facets."
What smokers think of death at first blush, when exposed to the new labels of graphic effects of smoking may create a desire to increase their exposure to the very things that may harm them.
Perhaps an analogy is: I do not like to be told what to do. If I am, I have a tendency to do the opposite, ignore or, do it anyway because I can...
Bottom-line:
The end results maybe worse than the proposed "cure."
Dallas93444,
I hold you and your opinion in high regard.........we could debate for hours.........this is exactly what our congress and representatives do.
I am a proponent of: simply stating:
This is what we know:
These are the known consquences:
take this, and make your choices.........
if my neighbor wishes to smoke, drink, drive fast, hold his own head under water...........let him.
It should be he, who understands, at your own peril. Taxpayers are not responsible.
As I said, I do not promote smoking......or many other things..........if you so choose............YOU pay the consequences.
I do not trust a government, that tells me, it has my own interest at heart, and then asks me for ID.
It seems unfair to me, and quite frankly, a lie.
though, I am not a smoker, I know many who are.........they most always ask for permission to smoke in my presence.
Most times it is granted, but when I have said, " my little child is in the room with nowhere to go"..they have excused themselves to the outdoors.
I do not promote smoking.....NOR do I hold smokers responsible for all modern illnesses or pollutions.
It is not fair to think that because someone enjoys a cigarette, that they are the cause of the ills of society.
Sometimes alcohol is a factor in traffic accidents. Such accidents occur even when alcohol is not present.........so, we can not say, "alcohol causes accidents",only that it sometimes contributes...
Would we DARE to say such a thing of a beef eater? A Mongo dancer? A bus driver? An airline pilot?
Like most people, the government, takes the path of least resistance. Today, the target seems to be smokers.
While it may indeed be a nasty and determinal habit, smokers themselves, as I know them, are not "hooligans"........most have been respectful of my wishes. That is all that can be asked of any neighbor.
My friend, I do not wish to argue with you.........merly, to explain my voice.
Smoking is probably the most addictive substance on our planet,everyone knows it causes death yet the governments of our world promote and encourage it simply for tax revenues.
It's there cash cow they won't legalize weed, why? possibly because it would lag far behind in the revenues generated in tax dollars, medications and doctors wages to try to save people who are dying from cancers related to smoking tobacco.
Marijuana has not proven to kill anyone compared to tobacco. It's all about MONEY and greed, tobacco will always be grown and made available to the world, it's all part of the BIG plan to eliminate people and reduce population.
So smoke yourself to death, the governments want that:0)) Great Hub and it didn't even go up in smoke...
- AUTHOR
onegoodwoman,
Bureaucracy.. is alive and well! Your points are valid. Smoking is part of the "sin tax." It is revenue. I do agree with the "laws" of not blowing cigarette smoke in my face... The smoke makes it difficult for me to breathe... If someone wants/desires to smoke, let them smoke at their own risk.
The flip side, is who pays for their (smokers) medical bills and societal costs because of their own selfish actions?
I remember visiting a patient dying with emphysema in an oxygen tent with a sign outside of his hospital room door requesting, "Do not give patient cigarettes." The first thing he did was request a cigarette... It took him two weeks to die... a slow, agonizing death of asphyxiation... literally dying with not enough air: gasping.
I would never profess that smoking is not dangerous to your health!
Having made that clear, I do see 'smoking' as a modern day 'witch hunt'. Smokers have become an easy target for blame.
Is it REALLY the fault of my smoking neighbor that my child has an earache? Really, I grew up in a non-smoking home and was plagued with earaches.
Is it REALLY the fault of smokers that air quality is non-existant in some communities? Really, what about the smoking autos, the city infernos, the buses, the airplanes?
We all know of someone who never smoked and has a type of cancer........we all know of someone who smoked for decades and died of old age.......
I have seen auto crashes, mangled limbs, I once even saw a child being placed into the 'body bag'.....it cost me my lunch and then my dinner...............STILL, I like to shift gears, feed the fuel and feel the power!
People will be people and we will do the things we either like or enjoy. The government can not change that. There will be those who take risks.....in the water, on the snow slopes, on the ball fields, in the autos or with a pack of smokes.
I recently returned to my home state, and learned of a law: No smoking in your car if there is a child under the age of 7 aboard............great go ahead and protect the children.....what about the 8 year old, or the 16 year old...........aren't they worthy of lawful protection?
It all tells me, it is not about your health or mine.......it is about revenue.
- AUTHOR
As a never smoked perspective, I have no idea of why people smoke. My point in this article is to point out the possible "blooper" the government is going to do by requiring graphic pictures on cigarette packaging. The "cure" may be worse the the "treatment..." Smokers may do more "hard" drugs after smoking, or as preliminary studies indicate; actually smoke more....
Hi Dallas - Smoking tobacco is a hard thing to quit. For most folks, not smoking is healthier than is smoking. Here are a couple of articles that pretty much tell the whole story. https://hubpages.com/t/c451f and https://hubpages.com/t/d97e5. One deals with some lung problems and the other one speaks about tobacco's radioactivity. These things are real "hot buttons" for me, and they might be of interest to others.
Gus :-)))
- AUTHOR
Angarastone,
Smoke, choke, croak... Any questions?
- AUTHOR
SilverGenes,
Well-intentioned, not enough researched program. Thanks for your comment.
I tend to agree. When people smoke, the last thing they need are government inflicted warnings on a package of cigarettes that is government sanctioned and taxed. In Canada we have the warning with accompanying disgusting photos and I know young people who purchase their cigarettes based on these warnings, such as "I'll have a pack of the heart disease/mouth cancer/impotence please." Excellent article!
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