Cigarettes in Pictures

There is a new pack of cigarettes coming, which will be half covered with gruesome pictures of cancer stricken lungs and people smoking out of their throats. I don’t have any major objection to this. I suppose it can’t hurt, but I do wonder whether this latest effort misses something. Is there anyone who doesn’t know that smoking can kill you? Is there anyone that hasn’t run across pictures like the ones that will be on the packs of cigarettes? Haven’t we already relegated smokers to sad little clusters fifteen feet from any doorway in any and every type of weather? Doesn’t already cost as much to buy cigarettes as it does to fill up your car with gasoline … maybe more? Is staring at a gruesome picture really going to make a difference? Will it make nicotine less addictive? Will it counter peer pressure? Will it give them more education ad a higher income? 5.7% of adults with a graduate degree smoke. 10.6% of adults with a college degree smoke. 41.3% of adults with a GED smoke. 19.6% of adults at or above the poverty level smoke. 31.5% of adults who live below the poverty level smoke. Maybe we need to think more about what numbers like these mean. Maybe we should be focusing more on encouraging education, and less on glossy pictures. Maybe we should also think more about why people smoke, why people have smoked since before white people came to America. Maybe that might help inform our efforts to decrease the number of smokers. Maybe there are some more questions to be asked and answered.