The New Convenience Store Porn

Leave it to Massachusetts to propose the mandated display of lurid posters everywhere cigarettes are sold.  The posters, which will be modeled after the ones used in no less a nanny-state than New York City, show a rotten tooth, cancer filled lungs, the scan of a brain after a stroke as the effects from smoking. 

They are disgusting, sensationalized, graphic appeals to the smoker’s more thoughtful nature. They will also cost the convenience store owner between $100 and $300 if not displayed within two feet of tobacco products he sells, but nothing to display. According to today’s Boston Globe, they will be produced with federal stimulus funds.

The campaign is being underwritten by $316,000 in federal stimulus money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will allow the state to provide the materials to retailers without charge.

Sweet! Free posters.

The real cost?  Another, seemingly inconsequential, nail placed on the coffin of business under the hammer of the greater good. Another violation of individual rights by the very institution set-up to protect them.

And if that perversion of the purpose of government is too abstract for you, how about this?

Because the posters will be produced by outside vendors, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Health said, it conforms to the intent of the stimulus law, providing jobs in a sour economy.

It is the very intention of these posters to cause loss of revenue to cigarettes sellers, not to mention the fact that the entire tobacco industry is targeted for destruction by our government.  But the threat to these existing jobs should be offset by the graphic designer employed in this campaign.

Disgusting.