Posted on 12/09/2013 8:23:38 PM PST by Slings and Arrows
I'm sitting at my desk, looking at a photograph of a gangrenous foot. It is a bloated thing in hues of phlegmatic gray rot, sanguine inflammation, melancholic black bile, and choleric open sores—exhibiting all the humors of a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Above the photograph, in bold white capitals on a dull, matte background are the words “smoking causes peripheral vascular disease.” The photograph is helpfully labeled “gangrene.” Below the photograph, in a bland sans-serif typeface with letters an eighth of an inch high, is “Marlboro Red.”
This is a pack of Australian cigarettes, conforming to that nation’s Tobacco Plain Packaging Act. The act went into effect on December 1, 2012, and is the strictest such legislation in the world.
The act isn’t very strict in its use of the word “plain.” I had to go through 35½ column inches of the Oxford English Dictionary before I arrived at definition 17, “homely: often used euphemistically for ill-favored, ugly.”
And the plain fact is I’ve been a journalist for more than four decades. I’ve listened to a lot of wild tales. But nothing I’ve ever heard—not even in the most hyperbolical regions of the Middle East from fantastical lunatics making their farthest-fetched pronouncements—can match “My mother died of foot gangrene from smoking.”
If putrid tootsies are not your style, there are a variety of other government-mandated images displayed on Australian cigarette packs, such as rotted gums, diseased lungs, a blind eye, a smoker’s corpse, and tongue cancer. Though the tongue cancer photo doesn’t really come off. It has the look of a graphic pornography extreme close-up where the close-up is so extreme that the graphic has displaced the porn.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
This cowgirl’s gonna cry.
I didn’t say tobacco companies should put the stickers on them. There could be a free sticker with every purchase that the buyer affixes.
People slip in showers/tubs and conk their heads, people fall down stairs.
Kids drown in pools.
Best to ban water just to be safe /S
If we all just did what the Gov demands we could all live FOREVER!
I lived in Ca when it was free.
I do not recognize it anymore.
You left out the Santa Ana winds and hard as a rock water. Talk about hazardous to your health....
I remember when Ca sold leaded gas LOL
No one died as a result!
There is a beach in ocean beach (dog beach) that it is illegal to smoke on but it is set aside just so you can crap your dogs on the beach.
WHAT!!!??? OK then stickers, knit cozys, something!!! This is America for Gosh...oh wait...sorry, Australia..you’re on your own there mate.
Coming to a country near you.
I leave the property at work on my own time for a ciggy and go smoke in the woods.
People still complain.
They think I am getting away with something.
Right...that’s why I said I may be wrong....but the government has already thought about a free sticker with each pack ploy....
“Australia’s largest tobacco franchise could be in breach of state tobacco laws by giving away free cardboard covers designed to cover the graphic imagery on plain cigarette packs.”
I hope they can’t stop you from transferring the cigarettes into your own case....but who knows?
Of course like anything the government do it’s ended up being a complete waste of time and money - nobody even looks at the packs - I have a few smoking mates that joke about it - the ones I am smoking will give me cancer - oh mine will only give me emphysema.
Ah the guberment is there nothing out of the reach of their overbearing stupidity?
Mel
I don’t smoke, but by God I will stand by you for the right to do so. :-)
I said the retail outlets could offer a free sticker for every purchase.
I don’t like the smell of peoples farts but I do not fart in front of people.
This is the retail outlet....
“The Tobacco Station Group, with more than 300 stores nationally, is offering covers which feature the company’s logo and website address free of charge to customers who purchase tobacco products in their outlets.”
Same link
Dumb kids probably think the gross pictures are “cool”.
Maybe they should show Lindsay Lohan and Catherine Zeta-Jones instead.
High heeled shoes, women have used them for a weapon and wound and sometimes even kill with em, think of all the twisted ankles and broken ankles we could prevent. Frying pans favored weapon of the p.o.ed wife. Think of the lives that could be saved not to mention headaches prevented. Call your congressman now.
Jeez life should be regulated. LOL
Someone could get hurt!
Guvmint protect us from ourselves, please I’m begging ya.
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