Source: www.abs-cbnnews.com (Philippines)
Author: Adel Gabot

Who would have thought graphic, disturbing pictures, like those showing a dead fetus lying amidst cigarette butts, or gangrenous feet, or ugly, bleeding mouth sores, or throats bulging with massive red tumors or black lung tissue would be so widely distributed, and even legally mandated?

I’m talking about cigarette packaging, of course.

Those of you smokers who travel have seen these pictures on cigarette packs abroad. In Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, everywhere. These caring and enlightened governments have long ago made it a law that cigarettes packaging must carry graphic images of diseases and the effects of tobacco on our health, in an aggressive effort to scare people off smoking. The more graphic the pictures, the better to convince people to kick the habit.

Canada, which started doing this in 2000 with a picture of mouth cancer, is now contemplating upping the ante by putting the actual deathbed photos of anti-smoking activist Barb Tarbox, as she looked, emaciated, and withered just before her recent death from cancer. Their research has shown that the photos elicit an even more intense response from smokers than the usual diseased body parts.

More recently, the United States, which had limited health warnings on cigarette packaging to a short, small text-only message from the Surgeon General on the side of the box, is now about to implement similar graphic pictorial warnings on 50% of the front and back of the pack. President Barack Obama, who is a smoker himself trying to quit, signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act last June 22 that imposes this law on tobacco companies, in addition to a cigarette “sin tax” he imposed in April that raised the tax from 39c to $1.01 per pack to discourage smoking.

I don’t smoke, and I never have, but my father, a soldier who fought in the Korean War and is a retired military officer smoked like a chimney when he was young and in the army. A two-pack-a-day Lucky Strike man, it nearly killed him, until he quit cold turkey. As a child, I remember sitting on his knee, fascinated by the smoke coming out of his mouth and nose, like it was some cool parlor trick, and thought to myself, when I grow up, I’m gonna do that too, yes I was. But I saw the agony he went through recovering, and then dealing with the withdrawal. I never picked up a cigarette.

I first saw the disturbing graphics warnings on packs being sold in Singapore years ago, and I vividly remember the picture: a full-color shot of a dissected, diseased lung, all red and black, streaked with tar and nicotine. I wanted to gag. Man, that was horrible, I thought, but also thinking, what a ballsy way to get people to quit, and marveled at a government able to force the issue. If I smoked, I would’ve quit then and there.

It also occurred to me what a hell of a compromise that really was, and how it underscored how helpless they really were to do the right thing: outlaw smoking outright. That fact that governments had to stoop to stunts like these told me two things: one, how massively powerful the tobacco industry was, and two, how weak human will was—no, not in quitting smoking as a habit, but in dealing with the problem as a society.

Of course, I’m talking out of my ass here, not being a smoker myself, and I’ve been told passionately many times by my smoker friends how I could never really understand that will power had nothing to do with it. Ok, I respect that. But man, what is the power of this habit that you can still pick out a stick from a box festooned with gruesome photo evidence of the consequences and light up?

I am reminded of the story of a friend of mine, whose father, as much a smoker as someone can possibly be, had gotten so sick from it he had to undergo a quadruple heart bypass that plunged his family into debt. But the minute he got out of the ICU, he asked for cigarettes and snuck out of his room in his hospital gown, with tubes still up his arms and chest, to sneak a couple of smokes out back.

Sheesh. I’m glad I never learned.

So, how does one deal with a problem like this in an organized, systematic way? Two obvious solutions are to make it so expensive that they won’t be able to afford it and stop and/or show them how disgusting and dangerous it is by putting gruesome pictures on the product itself, right in their faces and scare them off it.

Unlike our ASEAN neighbors, our country’s entire program to discourage smoking consists of seven words in small type on the box: “Cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health.”

So what do we do, slap on the gore? Might not work. I have a feeling pictorial warnings won’t wash here, with our overly sensitive and touchy populace. Besides, we love out vices, and denial is our favorite hobby. Gross pictures on my cig packs? I can already imagine the uproar. The other option is sin taxation. It’s a big, rich mother lode. The two largest companies, Philip Morris and Fortune Tobacco, control 90% of the P85 billion annual business.

But hey, wonder of wonders, our government has finally seen the light! Inspired by the recent radical movies by other countries to finally curb the tobacco menace, we’re actually doing something too!

Just recently, our lawmakers recently began motions to substantially increase the excise tax for alcohol and tobacco. If they can get the law to pass, the Finance Department says it hopes to generate at least P20B in the first year of implementation, and P40B the following year. Great! They figure that it will ease pressure on the budget deficit, which is expected to hit a record P250B by yearend, and minimize our loans. The additional collection will also help fund infrastructure and support social services.

Huh?

That’s why we’re doing this? To pay off our massive debts by charging us more to kill ourselves?

For a minute there, I actually thought we were going to do something right. The entire thing is profit-motivated. I should have known. Not a single word about discouraging smoking. Not even a mention of the possibility, of the remote hope, that if they increased the cost of smoking, people would actually stop the filthy habit and lives would be saved. That it might, just might, make our world a better place. Instead, they’re computing how much money they’ll make.

Oh, man. That’s gotta be the most faithless, cynical and jaded thing I’ve heard yet.

This country is really going up in smoke.