Why do we object to the wholesale federal editorializing against cigarettes? It creates a precedent for more government inveighing against vices.Why not put an image of a mangled automobile on a bottle vodka?
This image provided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday, June 21, 2011 shows one of nine new warning labels cigarette makers will have to use by the fall of 2012. In the most significant change to U.S. cigarette packs in 25 years, the FDA's the new warning labels depict in graphic detail the negative health effects of tobacco use.We are fascinated and concerned by the new labeling coming soon to cigarette labeling, a fresh chapter in the federal government’s ongoing aggressive and hypocritical campaign against smoking.
Everyone knows that smoking is very bad for one’s health. Now the FDA plans to hit us over the head with images of smokers suffering the consequences of their nasty habit, including one that shows a man blowing smoke through a hole in his neck. Such images will grace cigarette packs by October 2012.
Why do we object to the wholesale federal editorializing against cigarettes? For one, it creates a precedent for more government inveighing against vices. Surely the consumption of alcohol is in a similar league to cigarettes for the level of sickness and pain it causes society. Drunk drivers claimed more than 10,000 lives in 2009, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Why not put an image of a mangled automobile on a bottle vodka or a cross-section of a liver with severe cirrhosis on a bottle of chardonnay? Inevitably the question arises: Why does smoking deserve stand-alone status an object of government-required scorn?
Anti-smoking regulators and crusaders may believe the end justifies the means. Yet we object to the offensively simplistic propaganda, and the hypocrisy of condemning a national vice while collecting $8.5 billion annually in taxes from it. With these images, the federal government is at once insulting our intelligence while playing Big Brother.
Moreover, we doubt it will be effective. Will 16-year-olds identify with a man wearing an oxygen mask or a picture of a second-hand smoking victim? They will soon be numb to the shocking images on the packages. They may even come to mock them: Someone quipped on the Wall Street Journal site that kids will trade these newly labeled cigarette packs like baseball trading cards.
If the federal government doesn’t like something, they should abolish it or make users of the product pay a punitively high user tax for the privilege of destroying their bodies. Funnel the additional money into prevention and to help smokers quit the habit.
But, for certain, the feds should keep propaganda off the products we consume.