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1-800 Quit Now has got a whole bunch of horrific pictures that they are going to start putting on cigarette packs.

Are they going to work? My initial thought is: I doubt it. Young people are going to enjoy the risk and be challenged by the danger. Maybe, they will be like the potheads who the "your brain on drugs" egg commercial made hungry.

Tobacco will kill nearly 6 million people worldwide this year, including 600,000 non-smokers, the WHO said last month, estimating the global annual death toll could reach 8 million by 2030. The costs to the U.S. economy is $200 billion a year in medical costs and lost productivity.

Why haven’t the numbers done it?

Maybe, it’s not as simple as big tobacco makes it out to be. It’s time that we had a real discussion about what they are doing to promote the product and what can be done to stop it. Maybe, let’s start with the elimination of all substitutes in any form to tobacco. Next, let’s make them strictly libel for what their product does. That would make for some changes.

If the first reaction is : "Wait a second how can they be liable for something everyone knows about?" then I would suggest that the pictures really are just window dressing or it’s the reality that everyone really doesn’t know. It’s time we quit looking the other way and really started saving the economy some money.

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