New cigarette warning labels: What is wrong with our country

I can't wait until the day they rid the entire country of smokers...and then start targeted the fat fucks for the junk food they shovel down their pie holes. That...will be interesting.

 

You can have my Big Mac when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.

 

Because they can't ban it. No way in hell it would ever pass. So this is the compromise.

playthrough nailed it. This stuff is meant more for people to see before they start smoking than once they are already hooked.

Smokers don't like it? Too fucking bad. Quit and you won't have to look at the pictures. And as a bonus, you'll stop slowly killing yourself and poisoning the air for everybody around you.

 

Fat/obesity and smoking is such a false equivalency. A couple of years ago there was a big study that purported to show fatness was unhealthier than smoking -- and the cigarette idiots seized on it until the scientists got called on their statistical interpretations, re-examined the data and found that their conclusions were completely erroneous and the healthiest, longest-living group is actually the one that resides in the slightly overweight BMI range.

There are obvious drawbacks to unhealthy diet and lack of exercise, drawbacks that become more severe over time. But moderate indulgence of some of those foods is not a bad thing, nor is moderate consumption of alcohol.

On the other hand, there is no healthy way whatsoever to work in a cigarette.

 

I've been making the point you made in the second paragraph for ages. Nobody seems to buy it, but I agree completely.
Most health experts will tell you that an occasional Big Mac won't cause any problems, but when you eat them all the time, you can get into trouble.
Most health experts will tell you moderate drinking is OK for most people, but heavy drinking or driving while impaired is not OK.
I have yet to hear anyone say moderate smoking is harmless. It's certainly less harmful than heavy smoking, but far from harmless.

 

Because that's a false equivalency?

 

Exactly what I thought. They'll be collectors' items.

 

The photo warnings won't affect me in the least, therefore I am outraged about these photo warnings.

 

But these photo warnings impinge on rights that I've made up!

 

None of these disincentives to cigarette smoking is really a sufficient disincentive. They're already expensive and you're not allowed to smoke them anywhere and your health insurance goes way up, etc., ad inf.

I wonder what the effect(s) would be if we made health insurance unavailable to smokers. Or households with smokers. Not that the insurance would just cost a lot more, but that you couldn't buy it at all.

 

So the taxpayer gets to foot the bill for emergency room care? The smoker has to go on the taxpayer funded medicaid rolls? Or do we just refuse the smoker admittance to the hospital all together? Shit, maybe we ought to just round up smokers and put a bullet through their skulls -- that would be cheapest.

 

I'm being about half facetious, but consider that you're already paying scores of billions for smokers' medical care. To say nothing of a quarter million lung cancer deaths a year. And the heart disease and the respiratory illness and the lost productivity.

You subsidize tobacco growers, and you subsidize the campaign against tobacco. You tax tobacco, then spend the revenue on advertising to prevent the use of tobacco and on medical care for the users of tobacco.

Which of those makes sense?