Do Ghoulish New Cigarette Packages Go Too Far?

Dropped in on the neighbours yesterday. They happen to be cigarette smokers when not on the patch, so I had a look at the new packaging.

I think Doug's was Players Filter, but I couldn't tell for certain because there was no room for the label. Instead I saw a man's mouth, held open to display a tongue covered in what looked to be white, flaky mold. Just so we didn't take the image as a reminder to brush our teeth, the text informed us that this was what mouth cancer looked like, and that the gentleman would probably lose his tongue.

A second package on the table contained Claudette's slims. In this case, the smoker got to look at an image of a girl with no lips and blackened teeth.

The Department of National Health, not satisfied with the provision of information, have become purveyors of Grand-Guignol.

Don't get me wrong. I regard cigarette smoking as a deadly habit and cigarette companies as the personification of corporate evil. I know about second-hand smoke and the risk to the fetus and what a drag smokers are to the medical system. Anyone who can be trusted with hot coffee knows that.

Even so, this new level of propaganda leads me to wonder if, given a moral justification, there is any limit to the capacity of well-meaning bureaucrats to torture people for their own good.

What next? Will they conceal sharp objects in packages so that people cut themselves when they reach for a smoke? Perhaps the filters will be coated with dog feces, or the paper infected with a virus that gives people Plantar warts between their fingers.

Unintended consequences?

Surely there is a difference between warning about the dangers of smoking and conditioning human beings with aversion therapy like lab rats.

In A Clockwork Orange, the Burgess book and Kubrick film, Alex DeLarge, a nasty, violent lad with a taste for Beethoven, has his eyes forcefully tweezed open and is subjected to the "Ludovico Technique," an experimental aversion therapy to cure anti-social tendencies.

The technique is a success. Alex is wracked by nausea at the slightest hint of violence; he becomes a peaceful human being, but with an unintended consequence -- he also gets sick when he hears classical music.

I wonder if the new batch of state-sponsored aversion therapy will have some unintended consequences of its own. At minimum, I predict a heightened demand for retro cigarette cases and other accessories.

Who knows -- the new packaging could actually make smoking glamorous again.