If it is not effective, than why do it??
Again, I wasn't arguing its effectiveness. I simply said that I didn't weep for the tobacco companies, since they spent most of their existence lying to consumers. Understand?
But don't worry, I looked it up. Smoking is down slightly in the last 10 years, but so was in the previous 10 years before that. So one could say there was already a downtrend...Also, in the US, the biggest deterrent is price, that's why there is a state minimum price for tobacco products. So it could be the Australian government also raised the taxes on tobacco, and that was the real reason of the decreasing number of smokers, not the picture campaign...
I knew you weren't going to read the studies. What the hell is the point of asking for them if you're not going to read them?
So in plain English: Can you prove that the decrease in smokers is the result of the picture campaign only and not higher prices or a general downtrend or general education?
The second study I linked to suggested that people are being dissuaded from smoking by the images independently of tax raises or other factors, both because of the visceral reaction to the grossness, and because it's essentially mainlining the truth. Education is the only thing that could possibly decrease the amount of smokers.
But while we're on it, where are your studies proving that removing additives decreases the rate of smoking? Where are those studies?
OK, so why aren't there a sad, beaten woman's picture on bottle of spirits??? Or a crashed car's picture?
Because nobody's pushing for it? Like I said, this campaign is aimed at tobacco companies, and largely because they lied for so long about what their product actually does. It's sort of like comeuppance for their deceit. I mean, the same country is attempting to label food, and what are they pushing for? Pictures of diabetics? No. They're pushing for "traffic light labeling," which is just a pie chart of the fat, salt, etc. content. That's what your argument is a slippery slope.
And while drinking can also cause health problems, and driving under its influence can be deadly, there are ways to drink moderately and responsibly without really living under those threats. It's okay to drink a Budweiser every now and then. Plenty of people do. The same can't be said of cigarettes, which are hugely addictive as well as insanely dangerous. In other words, there's a difference between smokes and beers, or smokes and cheeseburgers.
By the way the ammonia thingy is a sideissue, I don't care for it that much, just an interesting note that tobacco treated with ammonia was more additive for mice than normal tobacco...
We've known that ammonia makes tobacco more addictive for half a century. But how is this a side-issue? It's the
crux of your argument. If regulating nicotine enhancers isn't what you're talking about, then what are you talking about?