What's next?

They're printing new warnings on cigarette packages these days -- graphic photos of blackened lungs, and cadaverous human beings blowing smoke out of tracheotomy openings...

Yuk.

Apparently, the little box of text that said the Surgeon General had determined that smoking is bad for your health just wasn't cutting it any more. People are too familiar with it, and it was "no longer effective".

Was it ever?

Regardless, I suppose that with the proliferation of TV shows that involve graphic autopsy images, they HAD to up the ante. People are accustomed to being scared these days, so it takes more than a silly text box to frighten them into good behavior.

I'm just wondering what's next -- pictures of rotten teeth on candy bars? Images of the morbidly obese on potato chip bags? Pictures of a healthy colon vs. a polyp-riddled one to encourage you to take the high fiber cereal? Diabetic ulcers pictured on soda cans?

Going to the grocery store might soon become as scary as CSI, or NCIS, or Dr. G: Medical Examiner...

And food corporations will LOVE the new marketing strategy: "Here's a product, ready for you to buy, complete with evidence as to why you should not..."

I'm sure that will fly.

I'm not a fan of smoking, but I do feel sorry for tobacco farmers -- an industry where the government requires you to do your best to convince people NOT to buy your product...We have been conditioned to think this is reasonable in regards to tobacco -- but we probably will feel differently about it when it comes to a grocery store near us...and it isn't different.

I'm reminded of this quote:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons that under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."        -- C.S. Lewis