[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by M G F on July 27, 2007, 2:20 pm, in reply to "Graphic Warning Labels" Seriously, I personally doubt that graphic warning labels will have much effect at all. I haven't done any hard research, but friends and colleagues in Australia, smokers and non-smokers alike, have told me that the graphic warning labels haven't had any noticeable effect. I've asked the smokers what their reaction has been and they have all replied with some form of a shrug and "I just ignore them." When I spent a week in Sydney shortly after the labels came into use, I found that I didn't notice them after I first checked to see if the photograph looked like it had been altered to appear worse than it was. (Yeah, I'm wired a little differently) Current smokers have already been exposed to ample images of damaged lungs and continue to smoke. By the time a person is in her late pre-teens, she has probably seen numerous images of damaged lungs along with any number of different anti smoking messages ranging from the strictly factual to the over the top propaganda, yet people continue to take up smoking every day. I think that if seeing those images 10, 20, even 40 times a day has any effect at all, for most smokers it will only be to reinforce their resolve to smoke. "Yes, I know it's bad for me. I heard you the first time." I think that most, if not all, smokers have some defiance-based motivation to smoke, and I can easily see the use of graphic warnings making it more prominent or conscious. A personal experience with vivid, in your face images of damaged lungs: When I was a freshman in high school, I was 15 years old and had been smoking for several years. My daily consumption and dedication to my sublime lover had increased to the point that when school started in the fall, going a full eight hours without a cigarette was, in my mind, out of the question. Fortunately, the other smokers and I had several opportunities through the course of the day. One of these was immediately after health class, on the way to the cafeteria for lunch. We could sneak away to an unmonitored area, have a cigarette and quietly rejoin the others. Our health teacher had three posters on the wall at the front of the room where everyone had to see them. One was a picture of a "normal" healthy pair of lungs and bore the words "NON-SMOKER" One showed a pair of blackened, cancerous lungs and bore the words "SMOKER'S LUNGS WITH CANCER" The third poster showed a pair of misshapen lungs with advanced emphysema. It's caption was "SMOKER'S LUNGS WITH EMPHYSEMA" We saw those three images for 50 minutes every day and, immediately afterward, with them fresh in our minds, proceeded to light up and willfully fill our lungs with smoke. I also remember chain-smoking while poring over my pulmonary therapy textbook before an exam, studying the very vivid images and reading the exquisitely graphic descriptions of the damage smoking does. It was a delightfully surreal experience. We have discussed the denial aspect of smoking before, so I won't say much about it. I suspect, though, that if graphic warnings come into use, it will only strengthen most smokers subliminal denial of the harm they are doing and the risk they are taking. Like vesperae, I cling to the hope that in the next decade (God! I hope it doesn't take that long) we will see a social shift away from extreme anti-smoking and bans on virtually all advertisement. Extremes can only be maintained for so long. At least that's what I keep telling myself. Despite all that I have just written, I sincerely hope that the tobacco industry will be able to prevent graphic warnings. Have you seen lungs with emphysema or cancer, or even a pair of lungs from an adult smoker who doesn't have either condition?!? They're disgusting! Who wants to look at that every time she lights up?
My first thought is that we will see the old fashioned cigarette case make a comeback. 
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