So. Cigarettes are bad for you. Who knew?

That appears to be thinking behind new cigarette packaging due out later this year, on which the federal government will attempt to gross me out with yucky pictures. Apparently, the boffins at Health and Human Services believe the following:

1. I really don’t know that smoking is bad for me.
2. Showing me pictures of cigarettes fucking up my insides will convince me.
3. Hence, I’ll quit smoking and stop forking over approximately $5 a day in optional state and federal taxes.

Genius!

Let me clarify for HHS:

1. I know that smoking is bad for me, probably with greater detail than most of the administrators at HHS who approved this campaign.
2. In my family, the more you smoke, the longer you live. (N=3, p ≤ 1.0)
3. I think it’s highly likely that I started smoking because it’s bad for you, and at the ripe old age of twenty, I disliked being such a goody two-shoes.
4. Now that I’ve been smoking for twenty years, I am addicted. That means that the cells in my body really couldn’t give a flying fuck what you have to say about it.

I don’t think that my experience with smoking is that anomalous; smokers have known for centuries that it’s bad for us, and we do it anyway. Like most smokers, I’d prefer not to be addicted whether or not I choose to stop; like most smokers, I intend to quit someday before it’s forced on me by reasons of health or early death, just not right now.

Chances that sterner warnings or yucky pictures will affect this: zero. Chances of cigarette-holding flip case sales going up: high. Or I’ll just switch back to an Altoids box.

You want to improve the health outcomes of smokers? Try doing research to make genetically-modified safe cigarettes—or at the very least, let’s see some actual government regulation that reduces the amount of crap in an American cigarette. Because that would be useful. This? It’s a load of bullshit designed not to piss off the tobacco companies too much. As if we can’t tell.