1581 Cigaretched

There's been a lot of hoohaw recently about the new graphic cigarette packs. The tobacco companies are fighting them, the feds are pushing them. The idea is to print disgustingly graphic and appalling photos on cigarette packs so that people see the actual bloody consequences of lung, throat, and mouth cancer. You know, show how really repulsive blackened lungs look like.
That oughta work for about a week.
Why? Because human beings are amazing about habituating and adapting to things. And because teenagers, the presumed targets for this gross-out campaign, already totally fuel the gross-out industry.
Anyone seen a slasher flick lately? The Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series were bad back in their time. Realistic gross-out technology has progressed far beyond that now. We're talking Gore 3-D.
Or remember back in the eighties when they came out with that whole line of Garbage Pail Kids, for young real kids? A take off on Cabbage Patch Kids, but totally gruesome and gross. There were even "scratch and stench" cards, and gross toys called Mad Balls. Not to mention something called Pukey-mon.
Translation: Kids dig gross.
As for adults, cigaretching graphic photos are no problem either. Remember those snap-at-the-top cloth cigarette cases your Aunt Madge used to have? They'll be back. They'll help protect those fragile expensive cigarettes anyhow.
Or what do you want to bet the i-People will come up with a suitable covering? A slightly deeper case for your iPhone perhaps. IPhones are just about cigarette length anyhow. What would be more natural than a flip open hard case? Phone in the front, loose cigarette nicotine party in the back. Cigarettes removed earlier from a gross-out pack.
Avoiding the graphic reminders of self-induced lung cancer?
There's an app for that.
America, ya gotta love it.