All the cigarette manufacturing companies should be told to make small diagonal slits on 4 corners of one of the sides of cigarette pack. The slits can be used as a 'photo holder'. When you buy a pack of cigarette, it should be made mandatory for the person buying to pay the money for the cigarette and also provide a photo of their loved ones (wife, kids etc). The shop keeper should be made responsible to insert the photo into the slits and give it to the customer. So everytime the customer wants to smoke a cigarette, he/she will look into the pic which reminds him/her about her social responsibility and he/she might eventually quit smoking. These kind of custom images could be more effective than any generic images of burnt lungs.
-- ravi kris334, Jun 11 2011

Hi [ravi]. This is an excellent idea, and really well thought out. Perhaps something similar could be done for burgers and wine. Also, couches should be sold with a little government-mandated picture of a fat person embroidered into the cushions, to discourage people from sitting down and vegetating in front of the TV. The government could also enforce attendance at gyms on a weekly basis, and require people to attend a fruit-eating centre daily. [-]
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 11 2011


What if they don't have any loved ones? Should they provide photos of their homeless buddies, or possibly themselves, as they are the ones who need to be cared about!
-- xandram, Jun 11 2011


I think the idea at the heart of this post - if you look past the whole "people should be made to do X" thing - is an interesting one: how could personalization be used to amplify messages, especially negative ones?

It's not that far from the "social" online ad presenting your friends' testimonials about an advertiser's products to your uncle Smokey's death mask on a box of cigs.

What if it's voluntary? You sign up for this program, and you give them the images you feel will affect you most strongly.

"She looks pretty in the `before' picture," said the clerk, handing over my box of CustomBoros.
-- jutta, Jun 11 2011


[pre apologies for that which follows]

To act as a deterrent, how about a picture of someone's hairy backside, with a smoking cigarette protruding from the anal area? This image would adorn each pack, by law, and the filter end of every cigarette would be stained with a suspicious narrow ring of brown pigment.
-- xenzag, Jun 11 2011


when I smoked 40 a day - anything that stressed me to give up just got me reaching for a ciggy!

I gave up when I could not breathe ...

talk to me now about smoking and I cough.
-- po, Jun 11 2011


[xenzag] Here's an Ethics essay topic for an undergraduate philosophy course: how does your suggestion differ from legal prohibition? [jutta]'s suggestion carves the moral issue more nearly at the joints, IMO.
-- mouseposture, Jun 11 2011


(Goon show) "Have a tree!" "No thanks, I'm trying to cut them down."

Recent Australian anti-smoking ads have a similar intent, without the individualisation. They show someone who has just realised that he has lung cancer, and imply the difficulty he will have telling his loved ones, and how much they will be affected.
-- spidermother, Jun 11 2011


//how much they will be affected// Less second- hand smoke.

(Please! Have a picture of Queen Victoria.)
-- mouseposture, Jun 11 2011


If it's a sign-up program, then sure, why not - it's a free country*. I'm not sure how petrol stations, newsagents and supermarkets would handle it, though.

But, as posted, phrases like "should be told" and "made mandatory" stand out. [ravi], you probably mean well, but you probably also enjoy some things that are arguably bad for you, or probably don't do enough of some things that are good for you. What say I make it mandatory for you to stick a photo of your kids or your spouse on every {chocolate bar/salty snack/bottle of wine/choose any vice you like} which you buy?

Vegetarians can demand that packaged meat is decorated with a photo of your first puppy, and all new cars could be made to carry a photo of a child that has been killed in a road accident.

*terms and conditions apply; subject to status and location.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 11 2011



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