(CP-DPJ) WASHINGTON—Just one day after unveiling a series of 36 proposed graphic warning labels for cigarette packages, including an image of a man in a coffin, a toe-tagged corpse in a morgue, and even a close-up of a tracheotomy, the Food and Drug Administration is signaling it intends to take even more drastic steps in its efforts to manipulate the white lab rats convince adult Americans with individual freedom and personal dignity to make healthy choices.
The initial series of proposed warning labels, allowed for under last year’s Pelosi-Reid-Obama legislation that gave broad new powers to the FDA to regulate tobacco, made some waves when it was brought forward on Wednesday, with a predictable dismissive reaction from Big Tobacco and from pathetic smokers who should not be allowed to control their own lives, and a generally positive response from public health advocates, though some expressed frustration that the proposed new warning images didn’t go far enough.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, a Roman Catholic noted for her consistent and principled defense of abortion rights, signaled the Obama administration’s support for the FDA move, calling the new labels “an important milestone in protecting our children” (sic). Nevertheless, and perhaps in response to the ho-hum reaction from smokers and tobacco companies, the administration today upped the ante.
Keith Richards: Rolling Stone and Smoker
The new proposal: by the year 2012, to require all packaged cigarettes sold in the US to feature a photo of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.
“Frankly, we were dismayed by the way that the first set of warning labels we proposed were received,” explained Dr. Lawrence R. Deyton, director of the FDA’s “Center for Tobacco Products. “We cannot have the serious and self-evidently right efforts of unelected and humorless government bureaucrats to command the minds and actions of Americans made a laughingstock.”
“So we decided to employ the ‘nuclear option’: Keith Richards’ absolutely horrifying countenance, leering Satanically at the would-be smoker from the package of Marlboro Reds.”
Richards, the 66-year old rocker known for at least three dozen unforgettable and indispensable rock tunes he has composed, his superhuman capacity for cocaine and heroin, and his ability to attract a seemingly endless train of lithe Swedish women, somehow even while lying unconscious on the floor of a filthy public bathroom, might just be the right face to convince Americans once and for all that smoking, estimated to be a factor in 440,000 deaths every year, and to pump $96 billion into our health care industry to cost $96 billion in the treatment of related health complications, is not the glamorous and fun habit it appears to be.
“Just look at this man,” said Dr. Deyton. “He’s literally been chain smoking for fifty years, stopping only to sleep—and I understand that there were large portions of 1971 and ’72 when he only did that a couple times a week. Seriously, I heard Keith died during 1989’s ‘Steel Wheels’ tour, and it was only a Swiss doctor who got him going again. Man called Borethus or something, in Zurich.”
The English rocker, estimated to be worth $195 million, and who recently took a $7 million advance on his new autobiography, offered a characteristically sardonic and wheezy perspective on the prospect of his face being used as a warning label when reached for comment at his winter home on Antigua.
“I mean, f*** it, you smoke, you die; you don’t smoke, you still f***in’ die, right? I fell out of a f***in’ palm tree last year. Should’ff been the end of me. Still here, though. Been sayin’ that for getting’ on forty years now: still here. Course it don’t matter how long you live if you can’t f***in’ live with yourself, like I always tells Mick. Speakin’ of His Lordship, it’s ‘bout bloody time me face started gettin’ put on things. Always those damn tyre tread lips in all the photographs.”
A quick survey of teen-aged males in the parking lot of a Phoenix-area Zia record store confirmed that these new and even more extreme FDA warning labels will get kids’ attention. Catholic Phoenix presented a group of 17-year-olds with a choice between a package of Pall Malls and a package of Pall Malls with Richards’ face taped onto it, and the teens had significantly more initial interest in the latter, though all 40 cigs were eventually distributed.
“Dude, you’re sayin’ that if I smoke these I’ll end up like him?” remarked Jared Wegman, a shaggy-haired, scrawny junior from PV High. “I’ll seriously have to think about that. He owns like 26 Bentleys, right?”
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I may have to start smoking just as a matter of principle.
I’ll join you.
Defy the nanny-state, and be more like ol’ Keef.
One more proposed image:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/252998/re-cigarette-packets-death-daniel-foster
I do not understand why graphic pictures on cigarette packs of tobacco-caused diseases is a government regulation so beyond the pale that it is worthy of mockery, sarcasm, and ad hominem attacks (i.e., mean-spirited satire). Tobacco is objectively unhealthy, and has serious externalities (viz., taxpayer-funded Medicare payments for tobacco-related diseases). These pictures are not a ban of tobacco products (which WOULD be worthy of mockery)—they are a subtle discouragement. They might or might not work (presumably there are studies?), but even if the state has not yet become the Church, does it not still have /some/ responsibility to promote the good of its citizens? Or would Powlett-Jones prefer to live in a JS Mill-esque free-for-all?
I say this as someone who enjoys tobacco from time to time, and who thinks that many anti-smoking laws (e.g., government bans on smoking in private businesses) are excessive restrictions on personal liberty. But I would not go so far as to mock someone who disagreed with me. It is a perfectly reasonable policy debate.
Indeed, this is a recurring (and distressing) feature of Powlett-Jones’s posts: the contemptuous dismissal or mockery (subtle or not) of those whom he disagrees with on high-level policy issues (viz., his two Obama posts), and his quick reduction of things to being “Nitzschean” or “nihilist” and subsequent dismissal (slapping on a label rather than trying to engage Thomistically). In these ways he reinforces an unfortunate stereotype of Catholics: that Catholics are zealots more interested in propagating their own version of Truth (by whatever mans necessary) than in trying to help lead others to Truth. Obviously this stereotype is false. But Powlett-Jones is not helping.
I have to disagree with you on at least on one point that I’m prepared to defend: Those images, at least the four that I saw on the link, are not subtle whatsoever. What are you talking about? Maybe a little 5-year-old wouldn’t get it, but there’s no way an adult wouldn’t understand the intended meaning immediately.
Granted, and I will freely admit that my post was not particularly well-explicated political philosophy. The pictures aren’t subtle. Regardless, they hardly prevent an adult who wants to buy cigarettes from buying them.
Selke, I’m working on developing a new stereotype: that Catholics pay close attention to language and meaning, shine a light on the unarticulated assumptions behind ideologies that are profoundly un-Catholic (and un-Thomistic), and have both thick skin and a delicious sense of humor.
But you’re not helping.
Also, please note:
1. I believe I have written ONE post on some things President Obama has said.
2. When I’m watching my TV, and a man comes on to tell me how white my shirts can be, but he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me, I can’t get no satisfaction.
3. I have never called anything or anyone “Nitzschean” in my entire life. I have also not used the label “Nietzschean” in any of my posts here at CP. (For the record, I might consider it high praise indeed, depending upon the circumstances. Ponder that.)
When I have written about what I call “postmodernist”, I have also offered explanations of what exactly this means and, I hope, why it’s no good. If you don’t like labels AT ALL, then your beef is also with Cardinal Ratzinger.
3. Dying all the time–lose your dreams and you will lose your mind. Ain’t life unkind?
4. You make perhaps one point in your comment that could be construed as an invitiation to discussion–”Or would Powlett-Jones prefer to live in a JS Mill-esque free-for-all?–, but the overall tone of your remarks suggests to me that you AREN’T really interested in engaging, whether Thomistically or at all–just mocking those with whom you disagree.
5. If you start me up, I’ll never stop.
There have been images on cigarette packaging in the UK for years… and everyone still smokes there… strange.
G.K. Chesterton wants to weigh in on this topic: http://tinyurl.com/23d8rf9
This makes me want to smoke again.
Denys, This is a great post! It reminds me of the major morals vs. minor morals crisis of which G.K. Chesterton spoke — we are worried about physical health, but not salvation (terrified of death, we cannot bear the thought of losing this life).
Though I am not officially connected with Opus Dei, I have wanted to get involved ever since I heard that St. Josemaria Escriva encouraged his priests to smoke (at least a little)…
I myself picked up smoking (only cigars and pipes, not cigarettes yet) to be in solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized!
While I am do not usually find myself inspired by Keith Richards, I have to admit that he does look pretty cool with those cigarettes!
If I get cancer, I’ll say, “Fair enough…”
Reg, Denys doesn’t want you or anyone else to get cancer. It gives me great sadness when I think about the late Fr Richard John Neuhaus, who died too soon of cancer at 72, and who was often photographed with a big cigar…but then again I am sad for selfish reasons: because through his writings he was my spiritual and intellectual father, and he won’t write anything more for me to read.
But I will say that if we’ve got St Josemaria, GKC, Fr Neuhaus, AND Keef all on the same side of an issue, then we might be approaching the truth.
And if you aren’t inspired by Keith Richards, just check out the first 25 seconds of this clip, depicting the perfect distillation of his art:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fpNKAvvkj0
The wicked syncopated head-turn at 0:10 is as perfect as it gets.
In that whip-lashing turn of the neck, it seems that truth and goodness meet in that most precious of all transcendental co-principles of being — Beauty.
I take it back, I AM inspired by Keith Richards…
Regarding cancer and an early death — the loss of great thinkers is a good reminder to us all that here we see only through a glass darkly, but there we will see him as he is.
I’m willing to pay for the simple pleasures with a few years of my life…
Gimme Shelter (with lots of ventilation)!
You’ve got to roll me (some American Spirit) and call me the tumblin’ dice…