Smoking: Fighting addiction with shock

A blackened lung. A rotting, sore-filled mouth. An addicted smoker exhaling through his tracheotomy hole. The images may be repulsive, said The New York Times in an editorial, but that’s the point. Under new regulations, the Food and Drug Administration is requiring tobacco companies to adorn every cigarette pack with one of nine graphic pictures, showing in full color the consequences of smoking. Some 440,000 Americans still die from smoking each year, and graphic warning labels like these have reduced smoking rates in other countries. The tobacco companies have challenged the regulations in court, but the FDA should be commended, said The Philadelphia Inquirer. Smoking can kill you. “People should be reminded of that.”

“Cigarettes kill, no argument there,” said Christopher Buckley in The Washington Post. Both of my parents died of diseases caused by smoking. But is it necessary to slap “grotesque decals on a product that any human being with an IQ above cretinous knows to be lethal?” Alcohol kills too. Should the government decorate bottles of Bud with pictures of “car crashes or cirrhotic livers or beaten wives?” Let’s not forget that “cigarettes are still legal,” said The Denver Post. There’s a role for government in publicizing the health dangers, especially to young people. But “it’s simply overkill to force businesses engaged in lawful commerce to give over half of their packaging” to images that are designed to horrify their customers.

Pardon me if I don’t feel all that sorry for the tobacco companies, said Ana Veciana-Suarez in The Miami Herald. They make a fortune selling an incredibly addictive product; despite decades of education, ever-more restrictive smoking bans, and escalating cigarette taxes, about 20 percent of the population, or nearly 50 million Americans, continues to puff away—a number that’s held steady since 2003. Don’t expect that number to change much, said Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune. Even the FDA estimates that its ghoulish attempt to frighten smokers will cut the prevalence of smoking by a mere one half of 1 percent. It’s a statistically meaningless goal, demonstrating that these nanny-state crusaders are “motivated less by medical concerns than moralism.” They’re using the government’s power to express their own disgust over a choice made by millions of “informed buyers.” For those of us who prize individual freedom, that’s even more repulsive than a photo of rotting gums.

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