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What are your thoughts on this? I think that forcing a company to display graphic pictures on there packaging is wrong. Yes cigarettes are bad for you they can cause cancer. So is a lot of other things. Some say that the Cigarette Companies have it coming. The lied and added things to their products to addict people to them. Ok. What about chip makers, makers of fast food products and the like? They add sugars, salts, other chemicals to make their product taste better than if it was just natural. The FDA is over stepping a touch on this one.
Last edited by TheViking85; 08-18-2011 at 06:15 AM..
Reason: Unnecessary use of emoticons.
Cigarettes, as a manufactured product, should be made completely illegal.
(note where I live)
Tobacco, the underlying natural state agricultural product*, should be left alone.
But the manufactured, advertised, packaged, and adulterated finished industrial product? No.
Cigarette's have NO redeeming value whatsoever to anyone...
and have no justifiable basis to continue to be a burden on the public.
Want a smoke? OK.
Buy loose raw product and roll your own.
Better yet... quit.
---
* This phrasing "natural state agricultural product" should be applied to many other things that can also be fully legal.
Last edited by MrRational; 08-18-2011 at 07:10 AM..
As long as they do the same thing with a bottle of booze. Remove the marketers labelling and replace them with pics of bashed wives, bashed or molested children, vehicle accident victims, shooting and/or stabbing victims etc etc etc on bottles of booze as well.
And while they're about it, they can put some pics on fast food outlets and their products as well, we all know how that rubbish affects ones health. They should even put picture posters up in doctors surgeries too, showing possible side effects of some medications and vaccines. Perhaps we should even see pictures on insulin meds as well, for those who got their diabetes from poor diets and junk food. Nobody should be left out here.
Let's not discriminate, let's show everyone what's possible with almost anything nowadays, don't just pick on smokers?
Alcohol costs the establishment more than cigarettes/tobacco ever has and ever will, but I don't hear too many squawking about putting booze in plain packaging, with those pictures that I bet NOBODY has ever seen too many people who look like those in those pictures?
Here is a link to a story with a little more information on what the OP is talking about.
Essentially, the FDA is looking to have pictures and text printed over a certain amount of the tobacco packaging, warning against known health risks involved in smoking cigarettes. The reason for doing so is to encourage people to stop smoking but most importantly, discouraging people (predominantly youth) from picking up the habit.
This form of labeling is not uncommon and it's increasingly being implemented through the industrialized west. From what I understand, the main reason for the labels is not to "bully" or single out smokers, but to discourage teenagers and young adults from picking up the habit in the first place, and in my opinion this step is justifiable when viewed in light of that. I've yet to meet a smoker who's ever suggested that I'd start or that smoking is good and though I understand the labeling might be provocative and uncomfortable (as is the intent), I think it's a small price to pay for the welfare of future generations.
To me then, this can be compared loosely to laws that made wearing a seatbelt in a car mandatory. Many who were already driving, and some still argue that this is a personal decision and it's inhibiting, but it's hard to dispute the track records seat belts have as far as safety goes and a law requiring it will help make sure future generations of drivers always wear theirs.
The OP brings up fast food, sugar etc in his post and I agree with him, these are all dangers, presently they could even be considered a far bigger danger considering the obesity epidemic in the US, however, that only tells me that when it comes to food that doesn't benefit you, the FDA hasn't been doing their job, and I do not think that failing in one field means they should stop working in another. If anything I hope this piece of legislation is followed by more and stricter control of what goes into our food and stronger consumer rights.
If anyone is interested in seeing the proposed labels they can be viewed either through the link at the beginning of my post or you can access them directly here, be advised, the images are graphic.
I am an ex-smoker and quit a little over a year ago after 30 years of smoking. I hope that I quit in time. Smoking IS bad for you and I am more than willing to help others quit if they ask for my help. That being said, I am somewhat amused of the irony when I see some walking heart attack warn others of the dangers of smoking while stuffing their faces with McDonalds and donuts.
As long as they do the same thing with a bottle of booze. Remove the marketers labelling and replace them with pics of bashed wives, bashed or molested children, vehicle accident victims, shooting and/or stabbing victims etc etc etc on bottles of booze as well.
And while they're about it, they can put some pics on fast food outlets and their products as well, we all know how that rubbish affects ones health. They should even put picture posters up in doctors surgeries too, showing possible side effects of some medications and vaccines. Perhaps we should even see pictures on insulin meds as well, for those who got their diabetes from poor diets and junk food. Nobody should be left out here.
Let's not discriminate, let's show everyone what's possible with almost anything nowadays, don't just pick on smokers?
Alcohol costs the establishment more than cigarettes/tobacco ever has and ever will, but I don't hear too many squawking about putting booze in plain packaging, with those pictures that I bet NOBODY has ever seen too many people who look like those in those pictures?
One in/out - all in/out I say.
During the late 1970s, I was in my teens, and I had some rather immature and selfish views on the world.
By that time, I knew that drinking, smoking, and drugs were bad. I was also a health freak, so fatties and even thin couch potatoes were on my hit list as well. I erroneously thought that campaigns to end smoking weren’t enough, and that everybody that engaged in unhealthy lifestyles that fell short of Olympic training should be subjected to intensive measures the likes of films, having workbooks to complete, and even trips to see the real damage all of the aforementioned things do. Then, they should be shown the opposite.
While this nation has come a long way at robbing individuals of Constitutional Rights, we still fall short of blatantly conscripting people into programs designed to make them good little healthy citizens to serve our all might government.
I think it’s a bad idea, and I further think that we should heavily deregulate everything I’ve touched on. People have their own lives to live, and they should feel free to do so.
Moderator cut: Discuss the topic not the poster.
I'm against any further regulations on cigarettes.
Last edited by TheViking85; 08-18-2011 at 02:19 PM..
Cigarette's have NO redeeming value whatsoever to anyone...
I would say that you're entitled to your opinion, but by adding the last two words in that sentence, you're attempting to define everyone else's opinion, too. That, I cannot agree with. You are wrong.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational
Buy loose raw product and roll your own.
I did, until Obama raised the tax on loose cigarette tobacco by over 2,000%, which more than tripled the retail cost. With the stroke of a pen, he effectively eliminated an entire niche of a very large industry.
Tobacco corporations don’t want to provide the pictures because they know that their sales will drop off and that equates to profit loss. Corporations want to make money and thus they want to take this case to court and let the legal system sort out the issue as a “freedom of speech” that corporations have.
If corporations have the right to freedom of speech in this court issue than there will be more cases and more issues. Should tobacco corporations win a court case, others corporations will also be allowed to have “freedom of speech”.
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean “honesty in advertising” which is already a difficult issue for many consumers when buying products. However more companies will than be allowed to advertise with or without “warning labels”. The next thing would be prescription drug manufactures could discontinue giving the consumer a list of side effects if their product is taken. Should the consumer have the right to know about medicines that could kill them?
If manufactures don’t have to provide “truthful” information on what is contained in their products people who have bad allergies to things like peanuts, wheat products, dairy lactose, and others could have serious health consequences or death.
Honesty in advertising is a requirement; there is no free speech when it comes to a produce sold to consumers.
The FDA isn’t overstepping anything when it comes to corporation’s free speech, keep them honest!
but with all the restrictions on smoking and now this, why not just make it against the law to make them....isnt this what it is really coming down to.....
but with all the restrictions on smoking and now this, why not just make it against the law to make them....isnt this what it is really coming down to.....
then after that, they can stop making alcohol
then after that they can stop making..........
and this is supposed to be a free country...
Well, it depends on your viewpoint I guess, it could indeed be seen as that, I personally have said that I think smoking will be abolished in the industrialized west, one way or another within the next 7 years or so.
I think there's a relatively important distinction between the modern cigarette and alcohol though, the cigarette and tobacco, as we know it today has only been around since the 40's or so, and they are filled with chemicals and ammonia etc, making them far more unhealthy than the original plant.
I saw an interview with a Norwegian tobacco producer once, and he openly said that of the factory workers, almost all of them smoked when they started working there, but quit within their first year, once they saw first hand what the ingredients were.
Alcohol on the other hand has been largely unchanged since the dawn of times, it's negative side effects are largely known at this point, but they generally only apply with excessive use, whereas cigarettes are unhealthy from the first puff.
Now I'm not one to undermine the problems that come with easy access to alcohol, but I've never been a big fan of using one bad thing to excuse another.
To me this is a matter of stopping something from going on in the next generations more so than stopping those who already smoke from doing so. And in all fairness, pictures of this nature (and they appear to be a lot less graphic than those in the EU) don't make it harder for seasoned smokers to buy tobacco, but it might deter someone from beginning.
I do not think it infringes freedom or liberty, one may still buy cigarette, but it helps you make a more informed decision about what you are actually doing. Most people undermine the dangers of cigarette smoke, not the other way around, pictures of this nature might be a little "in your face" or uncomfortable, but they do present a good balance to the lobbying from cigarette companies.
It is very clear that people largely don't know their own best, if they did we wouldn't have alcoholics, drug addicts and a nation wide obesity epidemic that's quickly spiraling out of control. I don't think it's a governments job to decide for a person what they should do, in that sense I suppose I agree with Ron Paul regarding drugs, but I think it's a government job to level the playing field and beyond all else, care for it's people, not it's corporations, helping people make informed decisions and limiting a corporations ability to skew the playing field in their favor is, in my opinion, a big part of governing.
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Free speech in advertising isn't a good thing.
