September 24, 2008
A great Canadian statesman once proclaimed “the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation”, something those on the arrow pointing ‘up’ side of the 49th parallel and to varying degrees those on the flip side, have taken to heart.
Unfortunately, as we’ve taken great pains to point out in our section ‘Nanny State Nonsense‘ beyond the boudoir busybody bureaucrats have gained a foothold just about everywhere else: so much so it seems, even a post coital puff could soon be at risk.
Those championing the anti-smoking position often possess conviction that would be the envy of 18th century Jesuits and have made it their life’s work to be a torrential downpour on the parade of anyone for whom cancer sticks are a soothing way to deal with life’s stressors. This includes mandating just how far away from a building you have to stand to light up that morning smoke (10 feet in some cases, arbitrarily 20 in another) and in Toronto, with Samuel Beckett-like absurdity, dictating exactly how high bar patio umbrellas must be.
It should be noted at this point, that neither of us is a smoker, but imposing restrictions on someone who is already outdoors strikes us as denigrating in the extreme.
In many cases though, we’ll readily concede that their digit-wagging has resulted in decent legislation—in many jurisdictions (recently New Jersey and our home province of Ontario) a fine is levied if you smoke with a child in the car. It’s the state’s duty, we feel, to protect the innocent from nonsensical practices—home schooling, bizarre medical beliefs of the stripe that regards life-saving blood transfusions with suspicion, puffing toxicity into your kid’s face etc, and only a Libertarian with an orbit of Pluto like distance from earthly reality would claim otherwise.
EVIDENCE
Now, the Nanny State is at it again, though this time with what seems a sensible ‘Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment’ approach to making people think twice before lighting up. According to a JAMA study, pro-tobacco marketing and depictions of tobacco use in TV/film more than doubles the odds of whether a teen will start smoking and since this is not about to change anytime soon (even the staunchest anti-smoking advocate will concede, smoking has a pretty damn cool aesthetic) it’s time to try a new and different counter measure.
On the surface, it seems asinine.
In NYC, the “Eating You Alive” campaign will feature matchbooks with grotesquery that would make a Civil War surgeon woozy including those from the Shane MacGowan school of dental hygiene [Editor's note, the Pogues feature prominently in our Top 10 'Bar' Songs of All Time and we encourage those who wish to do so, to light up a smoke and pretend they're in one of the bars mentioned pre-smoking ban]
The Commissioner of the city’s Department of Health said the creepy matchbooks, which would make David Cronenberg pass on dinner, were the next best alternative to putting grisly advertisements directly on cigarette packs themselves, which countries like Canada and Thailand have already done, with thus far decent results [see pic] 
In a University of Waterloo study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, it was found that nearly one third of former smokers reported that cigarette warning labels had motivated them to quit. 38% of all former smokers surveyed reported that smoke-free policies helped them remain abstinent and 27% reported that warning labels helped them do so. These figures are much more compelling than a platitudinous, ‘Well, if it makes one person quit/saves one life than it’s valuable’ school of public policy.
While a matchbook depiction is all fine and dandy, it seems that having it on the package itself is the next logical discharge in the battle against tobacco (and furthermore, with studies to show that percentage of package occupied with such an image, not surprisingly, is positively correlated with its effectiveness) and much more impactful than bullying smokers into standing a proscribed distance away from some structure, especially in cold climes such as those up here.
