Does The Government Think That Smokers Are Too Stupid To Read?
More attempts to make people stop smoking, this time using pictures:
Manufacturers will have to start complying from October next year.
After a public consultation 15 images, including ones of diseased lungs, have been chosen to accompany text warnings about lung cancer and heart disease.
Anti-smoking campaigners welcomed the move but smokers’ lobby group Forest said they were being “victimised”. (BBC)
Why are they doing this? Aren’t the current ‘warnings’ such as “smoking kills” etc. good enough? Why do they want to change it all? And what do they expect it to achieve? Either the government think that smokers are too stupid to read, hence the pictures, or they are on a crusade against people making their own choices.
People will not stop smoking because of a few nasty pictures, any more than they will due to a line of text telling them how bad smoking is for them – something smokers already know. Yet they actually made a mistake on at least one of the new warnings – the one I’ve used in the picture [right] says “Smoking causes fatal lung cancer”. The truth is actually that smoking can, potentially, cause lung cancer – which may or may not be fatal. But I suppose that wouldn’t fit on quite so easily.
Smoker choose to do so. The government has already tried almost everything to stop them from doing so – that constant addition of tax, the ban on smoking in public spaces, the first attempt at warning labels, and probably many others I’ve forgotten. These new warning labels will make no difference to those who smoke and those who want to smoke. They already know it’s bad for them, they already know that it is addictive. Yet they smoke anyway.
What business of the government’s is it to stop them from harming themselves? The government’s job stops at the education of the potential risks. After they have done that, it is up to the individual to make their choice. To smoke or not to smoke, to drink or not to drink. That is the question, and the answer can only be made by the individual themselves.
Sources: BBC, The Telegraph
Keep up the interesting blog.
I do however have 2 points:
1. If smokers have decided to smoke regardless of what is put on a cigarette packet who cares if there is a picture of an impotent man in bed with his disappointed wife (like on Brazilian cigarette packets!) or not. It makes no difference.
2. This idea of individual freedom in full knowledge of the risks – do you extend it to drugs that are currently illegal?
“What business of the government’s is it to stop them from harming themselves? The government’s job stops at the education of the potential risks. After they have done that, it is up to the individual to make their choice.”
Does this only apply to things that are currently legal – mainly due to tradition and commonness of use? If so why?
[...] objected to the signs on cigarettes packets, even though I don’t smoke, for the simple reason that [...]
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