They don't get you high? Would you as a non-smoker please explain that?
Extra break's at work? Do you seriously believe that...Man, I bet you are from the same school that all those people that hate daylight saving because the extra hour of sunlight in the morning fades the curtains quicker?
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It's not "plain packaging" in my book. That would be like a plain brown package that was generic save for a generic name of the brand somewhere on it. What Australia has is more like "warning packaging."
Would it prevent someone from starting smoking? I doubt the packaging itself would, if anything it would make kids (both of age and younger) think it was that much cooler, it would become braver and rebellious all at once. And I recall when I was a kid my older cousin and other older kids were trying hard to get "Death Smokes" which was a black package with a skull on it and bold warning...and they were choosing it over their preferred brand!
Still, I do know plenty of kids start for an image...at least in part. My mom chose Virginia Slims as a teen because she wanted to be sophisticated like the women in the ads she saw (btw, many smokers refuse to touch those with a derogatory name for them, I've seen even homeless people bumming for cigarettes refuse them), my cousin was drawn to some "rugged" view of Marlboro (save when he replaced them with Death Smokes while they were available), and someone else I know chose a brand because it was her favorite color and suggested success and influence to her. But since they all came from homes where adults smoked it could've been that they were just plain likely to smoke anyway to assert their own adulthood and/or peer pressure.
As for making them illegal, that would probably just make it more popular. Prohibition usually does. Not only does it become more fashionable but then criminals begin aggressively expanding their market and that often includes kids who then find it easier to acquire in part because criminals want to get them hooked and also because kids no longer need ID nor do the police typically know where they're being bought (whereas with stores the cops will pull the occasional sting to see if adults will either sell items prohibited to kids or take an offer to buy smokes or alcohol for teens which helps prevent a lot of it). Still, I'm glad for the restrictions against advertising them and would like our government to stop funding tobacco farmers (which they do right along with "don't smoke" campaigns), too.
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It also worked real well with, ahem, homosexuality.
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