Published in Liberty Free Press, February 15, 2000
It is difficult to find fault with the idea of government forcing private producers to put government propaganda on tobacco packaging. Government already imposes ingredient listing to food producers, safety warnings for a growing list of products, and language requirements in packaging or advertising. We are quite lucky that they let us smoke at all, aren't we?
There is actually a host of positive reasons for welcoming the extension of the concept of government packaging. If Health Canada (flectamus genua) is enlightened enough to promote breast feeding, why should they not warn us against life-threatening pleasures? Who is more trustworthy than a politician or a bureaucrat? Who will tell us the truth if not Milk Canada?
Marc Lalonde, the man who gave us Petro Canada, wrote after he became Health/Milk Minister: "The spirit of inquiry and skepticism, and particularly the Scientific Method, so essential to research, are, however, a problem in health promotion. The reason for this fact is that science is full of 'ifs', 'buts' and 'maybes' while messages designed to influence the public must be loud, clear and unequivocal." (Marc Lalonde, A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians: A Working Document, Department of National Health and Welfare, 1974, p. 57)
Government truth propaganda is even more indispensable when one considers how young people and feeble minds might otherwise be influenced by tobacco-lobby literature. We should be especially concerned about our French Canadian fellow citizens who spent their childhood in the froggy company of smokers like Captain Haddock or Lucky Luke. Even Sganarelle, a Molière hero, said: "Aristotle and the philosophers can say what they like, but there is nothing equal to tobacco: it's an honest man's habit, and anyone who can get on without it doesn't deserve to be living at all." Good Grace! Heavens! NSRA!
Now, the Lawmaker is facing a real problem here. For government has to keep its stature as a role-model for our nonsmoking, nonthinking, noneverything citizenry. It should not impose any discriminatory obligation, to which it does not submit itself too. Allan Rock calls this the lure of law. Moreover, young rebels might be perversely attracted to cigarette packs with pictures of cancerous tongues, limping penises, and dying patients on medicare waiting lists. It will have escaped no brilliant mind at Stealth Canada what the antidote is: that government itself be perceived as anti-authority.
Consequently, government should, on its own product packaging, do the same as what it forces upon the private sector. Government packaging as a concept would then reach its true, social and collective, meaning. As my humble contribution to the Holy War of Public Purity, here are a few examples of the warnings and vivid graphics that should occupy 50% of government packaging, ads and forms included.
- On government brown recycled envelopes, a picture of a long-term, destitute welfare recipient or, perhaps, a Bombardier executive, with the terse warning: "Government assistance is addictive."
- On income tax forms, a small entrepreneur in jail, with the caption: "More people have been jailed by Tax Canada than by all the tobacco companies in the world."
- On the back of the new motorboat license, a picture of a taxpayer's lung full of water, with a reminder that "during all these years since Confederation, government has ignominiously let Canadians drown."
- On the back of every permit you need in order to own a single-barrelled shotgun, a picture of the three senior citizens clubbed to death in their Joliette area home, with the caption: "Obeying gun controls can kill you."
- On every antismoking ad, a smiling picture of Karl Astel, director of the Nazis' Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, father of all health fascists, with the warning that "During the 20th century, governments have killed 60 million of their own citizens."
- On Customs airport boots, a picture of a docile Canadian being stripped-searched: "Every year, the People gives us a new law and a new reason for searching your luggage." The picture of a wretched Japanese Canadian, expropriated and separated from his family in a wartime internment camp, would also do the trick.
- On the back of Social Insurance cards, a picture of a 18th-century American slave: "We number those we love."
- On the Justice Department's Home Page, under a picture of Louis Riel: "Police in Canada can kill you."
Every American-Canadian nonsomething who has watched George Lucas's first science-fiction movie, THX-1138, will agree with the final proposal. On the fronton of all government buildings, just below the flag and above the apartheid zone where smokers congregate, should figure the soft-spoken words with which the kind tyrant of THX-1138 motivates its wards: "You are a true believer. Blessings of the state, blessings of the masses. Work hard, increase production, avoid accidents, and be happy."