Unmark Everything

The marketing departments of cigarette companies like to espouse the virtues of smoking their addictive little sticks through stupid messages and graphic designs placed on their packaging and labelling in an attempt to encourage potential buyers to purchase their product.  Of course the evil little catch in the rather conspicuous small print is that this leads the buyer's health down the well-worn path of lung diseases, cancer, diabetes, stroke, hypertension, blood clots, emphysema, heart attacks, addiction, ashtray breathe, general stinkiness etc etc etc etc.

I think having unmarked cigarette packets is a rather excellent idea.  I don't think it'll stop people from smoking, or stop impressionable young things from taking up the behaviour, but I stand behind the idea of pissing off cigarette manufacturers and leaving their sellers out of pocket.  Why should the sellers be punished?  Um, because they are selling packeted poison that should be made illegal.  Screw the stupid sellers.

I actually think we should put plain labels on everything that's for sale on the market.  Because the real thing never looks like the cover on the box anyway.  Nearly all the models we see in magazines are air brushed, meaning they look nothing like the actual model in person. 

The same goes for food that, once prepared, usually looks nothing like it's model on the packet, which has undergone hours of food styling and hair and makeup teams armed with tongs and forks, and has benefited from the art of airbrushing and savvy lighting techniques.  Furthermore, lasagnes that drip tantalisingly with actual cheese on the box will often contain no actual cheese, just some sort of processed white sauce concoction.

But why not take it one step further and have no packaging whatsoever?  Just force smokers to rock up to their local Woolies with a plastic bag or cardboard box, and the seller can toss in a bunch of cigarettes while simultaneously judging them, correctly, as one of the world's least bright folk.  Considering that millions of people around the world die of smoking-related ilnesses every year, I think this is a valid appraisal of their intelligence. 

But I guess smokers are content to venture out into the freezing cold night and start puffing away, so a small inconvenience like a lack of packaging will probably be of little concern to them.  But perhaps by the time the smoker has carted their cancer stick-laden cardboard box home, they would likely be so damaged by water vapour, dust, and crushed to the point that they will be rendered useless. 

Alternatively, we could use one of those companies that wraps all their product in titanium-based plastic, the kind that you simply cannot remove, and get them to wrap all cigarette packets.  By the time the smokers get the darn stuff off, they would have gotten through all the nastier symptoms of nicotine addiction.

I don't know, I'm just trying to help.  I'm a helper.