I will be forever angry at what the state in most places has done to cigarettes. It's absolutely amazing that they can force someone to do something to heinous in their product.
What's wrong with showing someone the likely long-term consequences of using a product? How is that humiliating at all?
I cannot understand your problem at all, except that a government agency has placed certain restrictions on a certain type of product packaging, which seems entirely non-controversial to me.
Have you asked a smoker what they think and feel about it?
Are they happy the product they buy tells them they are going to have a gruesome medical condition?
And do you smoke? And do you advocate for the same imagery on products also associated to gruesome conditions but products you use, like computers, cars, food, buildings, government, etc?
As a non-smoker, I find it pretty gross what they do (here in Canada). Pictures of needles being poked into eyes with boosted contrast, boosted green component... I get where people are coming from, but it seems unjust in principle what they're doing.
Maybe it should only apply to companies which have engaged in fraudulent IFR.
It's a heinous product that does horrible things to people, so good. This is an industry that intentionally targets children to sell them addictive, carcinogenic, toxic, foul-smelling items for profit.
You could say the same about cheese, coffee, cars, alcohol, etc.
How about having to put a picture of a pregnant woman being run over on the hood of every tesla, to remind about the murderous and gruesome reality of the manslaughters of the autoindustry?
The difference is not the product, its the popular sentiment that legitimizes a terrible overreach of state power.
As far as the overall utility to harmfulness ratio, I'm sure cigarettes lose compared to those products. It's like comparing crack to cell phones. Yes, they are both somewhat addictive. However, one has demonstrable utility, and the other doesn't, even for narcoleptics.
The discussion of whether the use of state power to regulate products is appropriate is a potentially lengthy political discussion that isn't worth starting here.
They geared their advertising specifically towards adolescents. Any targeted group subjected to to advertising is affected by it. In the case of children, they are especially vulnerable to advertising. In much of Europe, it's not legal to advertise anything directly to children, much less addictive drugs.
