A long time ago I (among others) had the idea to put gross images of lip and lung cancer on packages of cigarettes and tobacco to sway people from smoking them. In my version of that idea the manufacturers chose to put these on their packages rather than the Surgeon General’s warning that they have been forced to put on there, wasting money on the ink and processing to do it. Especially since all smokers know those Surgeon General’s warnings by heart, and they could have stopped putting them on there years ago and none of us would have noticed.
I don’t mind looking at graphic disease images when I am smoking either, does anyone think there are any smokers out there who don’t realize that smoking is bad for you? Because I am pretty sure most of us do. I highly doubt anyone is out there puffing on a Marlboro thinking “I bet this cigarette will make me live forever!!”
Today I ran across the headline “Graphic tobacco warning proposed for stores” and thought DANG! They stole my idea!
Turns out, their version is just slightly different. Taxachussettes is proposing a bill that would FORCE retailers to put graphic images like the one above in their stores. Over 9,000 retailers would be affected. Now, I worked in retail for a long time, and in plenty of places that sold cigarettes and let me tell you something. Retailers don’t sell cigarettes because they make a big profit off of them. In fact they are barely over mark-up and the man hours used to make sure employees aren’t stealing cigarettes via carton and pack counts each shift, probably do not cover the money made from them. They are one of the biggest pain in the ass parts of a job in retail. They do it because it brings customers. People come in to buy cigarettes and they are likely to grab a lighter (which has a HUGE markup) or they might need a soda, or candy…. you get the picture.
SO, let me get this straight. If you own a gas station and you want to sell cigarettes in Taxechussettes you will have no other choice than to spend even more of the money you don’t make on them to buy and put out these signs? Even if the posters are free, the retailers are still spending time and money to make sure these are put up. AND they have to move quick selling items to make room for these posters because they must be within 2 feet of the tobacco being sold!
Plus I just love when I read newspaper articles that just either make shit up on their own, or don’t bother to check facts. A good example is this quote saying tobacco is “the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States”. My version of the paper seemed to be missing the sources cited in it, so someone who got the version with sources quoted, please leave us a comment below. That quote, while may be true in some areas, is complete bullshit and thrown in there to make the reader react emotionally and exclaim fun phrases like “Oh my goodness! Something needs to be done!” and “Won’t someone think of the CHILDREN!!”
Now if that weren’t enough to make you say “those bastards!” Hang on to your Hilfigers because this ones gonna make you laugh.
The campaign is being underwritten by $316,000 in federal stimulus money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will allow the state to provide the materials to retailers without charge.
okay sure, I’ll repeat that….
The campaign is being underwritten by $316,000 in federal stimulus money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will allow the state to provide the materials to retailers without charge.
yes that’s right, we get to pay for it! (Well at least those of you who live in that really awesome state trying to push this crap.) Go ahead start laughing… you know you wanna.
My favorite part about this is where some Einstein just wants to make sure it is lots of languages so everyone can read them! What a fantastic idea!! There are only 22 languages spoken commonly in the US I am sure they will all fit on one poster or you could spend 22X the amount we were going to to print them in all the languages! We should probably go ahead and translate it to pirate too, just so no one is offended.
Another beautiful quote from the article: ”We need to help our immigrant populations deal with this,” said Dr. Michele David, a council member.”
She’s completely right of course. I mean what better things to do as a nearly broke and broken country then to spend even more taxpayer dollars on helping immigrants who have quit smoking, not be tempted to buy that pack. I definitely can’t think of anything more important. In fact I think a better idea is just to make smoking illegal all together immediately, why waste all this time and money when that is where we are headed anyway right?
you can read the original article here: http://www.boston.com/news/health/blog/2010/05/graphic_tobacco.html
Other References:
http://www.techjackal.net/other/2010/05/13/anti-smoking-campaign-in-massachusetts-gets-graphic/
Boy, I am searching the internet and come up with some considerate communications place as forums, blogs. Could you hand out me some suggestion?
I want to corrupt a old digital voice recorder from my pen-pal and anyone contain reviews of Kicker L7 15? thanks a lot.