I work in a convenience store. We sell tobacco products. Anyone who smokes will know that Health Canada has recently mandated even more grotesque images on your cigarette packaging. There’ve been warning labels with scary pictures on your tobacco products for some time, but these new ones are truly horrific. I gag every time I pass one to a customer. I particularly hate the eyeball one. I try not to look, but it’s difficult to pick an object up and put it in someone’s hand without looking at it.
I don’t smoke. I never have, and I don’t intend to start. But I’m the one – me and others like me – that has to look at these disturbing images for several hours a day. That’s not fair. I’m just a high school student trying to save money for university. It’s not my fault people are dying of a million smoking related illnesses. I’d be willing to suck it up if it made people quit, but it doesn’t. Customers come in to the store for their smokes, they look at the pictures and grimace and complain, but they still buy them. There is no image you can put on a package of cigarettes that is horrific enough to stop a smoker from smoking them.
I’ll be so glad when I turn 19 and I can work at a job where I can sell people alcohol, which for some reason doesn’t need to be accompanied by pictures of decaying internal organs. —Squicky
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2012.
I worked in a smoke shop through college. I know two people who quit because of those images. One couldn’t stand the picture of gross, rotting teeth, the other stopped soon after reading the warning about second hand-smoke effecting children.
Then there were the folks who would just ask for a different pack of cigarettes… one that didn’t remind them of their own impotence.
You have to put up with this small problem for now. But maybe in a decade or two smokes will be sold strictly in tobacco shops, not every single gas station, convenience store, and supermarket in the country.
Suck it up! For fuck sakes boy, really? Look, it’s the heat of the oven thing… don’t like it? Get out and fuck off.
For once, I actually agree with Meaty.
Really? this is what your are bitching about.FFS, suck it up sunshine
correct me if I am wrong, but don’t you have to be of legal age to sell tobacco in Nova Scotia (i.e.: 19)?
disregard…
In Atlantic Canada there is no provision under tobacco legislation that has to do with the age of people selling or handling tobacco products. Retailers can hire people under the age of 19 years to sell tobacco products, with the exception of a tobacconist shop in New Brunswick. Clerks just can’t sell tobacco products to people under 19.
It gets more disturbing as you grow older. Might as well get used to it now.
You could put a warning that reads “82% CAHNCE OF BEING SHOT IN THE HEAD IF YOU SMOKE THESE” and people would still smoke. It tastes great, makes your house and clothes smell great (especially in the rain), and makes it way easier to hold your breath underwater. YAY SMOKING, coughcough.
I do wonder about the whole idea of nasty ,Could happen photo’s though If you smoke cigarettes. So why is it needed for one product ? IF its good enough for tobacco , why not alcohol ?
Nice big photo’s of diseased livers, people all jaundice yellow dying from cirrosis .
Or Car/Auto ads, showing car wrecks, pieces of people, dead kids…THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU IN YOUR CAR ! ! ! !Poster type advertising in every car dealership
After all there are all kinds of awful deaths, why not airplane tickets with photos of horrific crashes ?
Bus ads, showing what happens when yer run over by a bus…nice graphic of a squished mom , baby & stroller all crushed into 1 gory mess !
Think of all the disturbing things that could happen if say the elevator crashed to the ground…motorcycle photos… buy a Harley, pray you don’t end up like these guy’s ~;p
i just saw a queen bee, so i kinda don’t care
I love when customers come into my Convenience store, I give them the pack with the eye or the heart, and they will ask for another pack, my simple reply is no! You get the pack I give you!
Is there not a way to cover the image with your hand or otherwise avert your eyes from it as you are ringing up?
I haven’t seen the images (not my habit, and congress nixed the nasty pics down heah-boo on them) but I don’t think they’d be rolled out unless there was research showing that it worked to get folks to quit. Just because your customers roll their eyes at the checkout, doesn’t mean they’re not having a cumulative affect. If you never pick it up, it’s worth it!
…and for someone asking for a different pack? What, do they think a pack with a nicer picture won’t give them cancer? “Oh, not the diseased lung! give me the pack with the fluffy bunnies!”
maybe they are making a collage^^
here’s the funny thing about all these stupid pictures.they don’t stop fuck all from smoking.if i want to i will smoke. and no amount of dumb shit will stop me. and as to smoking, if gubment wanted everyone to stop, then ban themand just stop the manufcturing of them, period. but no, the boys in ottawa need sckers like us, to keep hauling in all that nice cash we pay on tobacco. they would ever kill that golden fucking goose.and as to taxes, we smokers pay way more than nons. and we use less health care than nons.
the reason is that we probly die sooner and therefore, the nos can take more longer advantage of the health care system, and we won’t even go there about stupid sports related injuries. and then you have ll the snifflers going to the hospitals, for very minor shit. so yeah, i smoke, ad i don’t give a fuck about you or your whiney fucking attitude towards me. but just maybe, i’ll outlive all you nons, and laugh at your graves, after i piss on them.
Annnnd that right there is why cigarettes need warnings on them. Because there are dumbasses out there who still don’t think they’re bad for you. Do you even know how much it costs the healthcare system to deal with cancer and other smoking-related illnesses LS or are you just spewing bullshit? Never mind. I know the answer.
Hopefully you’re not saving towards a medical degree OP.
Although I do find cigarette smoke irritating and the odour to be crappy, sometimes I do enjoy the scent of cigarette smoke but if it’s outside on a cool and windy day. It’s odd.
A private members bill was recently defeated in parliament. If passed it would have mandated that all tobacco products carry this image:
http://ferrellgummit.files.wordpress.com/2…
It was deemed that the increased suicide rate among teenage convenience store clerks would offset any wider scale public health benefits.
If the govt banned smoking/cigarettes, what would the hookers do for breakfast? How can you be the best hooker you can be without your coffee with crushed up oxys in it and a couple smokes?
If the government banned smoking/cigarettes EVERY public sector trade union contract would have to be re-negotiated. Chaos, mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together, Biblical endtimes >; )
..and as HarperDevil said, can you imagine dealing with the “quiet professionals” of Canada Post or the hilariously mis-named Access N.S. if they haven’t had their “hooker’s breakfast”
“and we use less health care than nons.(smokers)”
http://gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/23…
Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?!
http://www.citycaucus.com/images/puzzled-l…
a. you don’t have to work there. There are other jobs out there for students;
b. alcohol should come with warning labels and disgusting and pictures; and
c. good luck trying to get one of those cushy NSLC jobs. You either have to know someone or give a great BJ. LOL.
People who smoke smell, Mel.
And they actually don’t realize how stinky they are.
Even if they smoke outside. They could still gag a maggot.
You’re a teenager with internet access and seeing cigarette packages is squicking you out. Trying to wrap my head around that one.