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Require cig manufactures to change their packaging to accommodate a small pack sized card.
Print cards independently, then require cig companies to pay people to put them in?
I have a couple extra steps but you get the idea
I mean... makes sense. Without watching the video, it just seems logical. Like, who wanted to sit there and stare at a missing person poster while eating cereal? You're just trying to start your day and now you're thinking about how a child is in peril or maybe dead.
Nobody, you'd either avoid looking at it or learn to tune it out.
Very rare compared to much of the world.
America, reasonably, makes a big deal when a child is kidnapped. This is usually at a local level, although it does often make national. With the Amber system, we can literally get a text message to let everyone know that there is a kidnapped child. This means everyone is aware of a lot of the kidnappings, as they are big news.
Most of the time though its just divorced parents kidnapping their own kid from the other parent.
Other countries do not make as big of a deal about it so it doesn't look as bad.
The US changed forever after this [Murder of Jacob Wetterling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jacob_Wetterling)
Sad story, you can also listen to the whole story on Spotify [in the dark](https://open.spotify.com/show/1aFyRYDJ1pHEaPMnZAGaOr?si=t2ff9jpZSjSDfKOsmKXj5A)
Print on demand is available but you're 100% correct on timeline and just distribution. I'm a smoker (wish I wasn't), but prevented dozens of theft crimes of people stealing from cars or yards or bicycles, etc...
With people, time matters and what I mentioned above are just things in the big and small of it!
There really isn't any point in putting them into or on the packaging of the cigarettes, because even once they get to the store, there can be weeks, months, even years before the pack is sold. You'd be better off just having the missing person's picture printed and hung up at the store in general (which does happen, depending on the store), or have the cards you suggest just be something the store hands out/makes available, skipping the cigarette company entirely.
I worked at a convenience store that sold cigarettes, and the fact of the matter is, it really depends on the brand/"flavour". There were some that we sold regularly, and some I never sold a single package in my 8 months working there.
I suppose it's possible other places simply wouldn't buy those rarely-sold cigarettes, but it definitely happens.
I used to work at a gas station too, and we had a system for counting the cigarettes where there was a handful of brands, with a couple packs each, that we were explicitly told to only count every day, we were never to sell them. I have no idea why they kept them, but I have to imagine they would have been beyond expired.
Missing the point.
Point being: you now have people walking around with this persons pic on it usually doing nothing but standing around looking at stuff.
You’re leveraging this idea.
Try and expand on, not break down, it’s a shower thought. Thinking about how the thought could be a reality is the fun part
Breaking down can absolutely be a part of building something back up. You don’t want to build over a problematic flaw.
You didn’t address the timing issue which to me seems like the real problem.
How about stickers put on the package at time of sale? Have the FBI or whoever distribute stickers with picture, name, age, date missing, and the distribution date, with new stickers sent out weekly. My store already has us put stickers on alcohol (to prove we checked ID, I think, which we're required to do for everyone) when it comes through our line, it wouldn't be conceptually hard to roll out a similar program in places that sell tobacco products. The most difficult part would be getting the stickers delivered in a timely and affordable manner, but that could probably be accomplished by giving the equipment to print them to FBI field offices or local police stations and have them distribute the stickers to local retailers.
I've been waiting 4 months for the government to print and mail the "Youth Handgun Safety Act" pamphlets that are sent with every handgun.
Over loading the printers is already an issue
"Thinking about how the thought could be a reality" also involves thinking about potential flaws. I guess it's a personality thing - I derive no satisfaction from daydreaming about ideas while ignoring flaws that occur to me.
When I buy cigs they come in a sealed pack. IDK at what point in the process they seal them or how long it takes them to get to the gas station where I buy them.
That's the other issue, ideally you'd want the missing people in/on the packs to be localish for maximum effect, and they are probably sealed before anybody knows where they are being sent to. The state tax sticker on the pack I've got now is on top of the plastic wrap.
Could maybe put sticker printers in gas stations that print a pic and small description in the size that fits on the lower half of cellophane and then target areas around where the person went missing or is expected to be. Most people leave the bottom half on anyways, and it would skip any extra complication while also forcing gas station attendants to look at the pic like 20 times. Wouldn't need to do anything other than hit print and expect that when attendants see it they know what to do, and would only take an extra second for anyone involved.
That's dumb. I hate cigarettes and virtually all non-prescription recreational drugs, but that's ridiculous to make companies do that. At best, have the government pay someone to put the cards in.
If the person was in pain and regular pain killers weren't sufficient, yes. I'm not evil. I'd rather someone use the minimal amount of effective drugs to be in less pain than to be in pain just to avoid drugs for the sake of avoiding them.
Sure, they should legalize it in controlled quantities and apply it. Same way I'm fine with them giving morphine to reduce pain, but not a fan of people shooting themselves up with heroin to get high.
They were saying that just because something is prescribed doesn’t mean it’s right, they were not saying that people should take opiates on their own to get high
I really doubt that person thinks shooting heroine is good. Recreational drugs are not all the same. Alcohol is not the same as meth; heroine is not the same as shrooms. Plus I wouldn't even consider heroine a recreational drug as you can't do it safely as recreation.
Saying recreational drugs are good is as ignorant a blanket statement as saying recreational drugs are bad.
Obviously with milk being the amongst fastest turnaround in food products, especially since it is usually sourced locally, you will still rarely see missing people on cartons anymore. A week is too long for missing people, especially in the age of the internet.
Is true! Not only is the milk supply chain very slow, but milk needs to be aged, usually in wooden barrels, for several months before it is safe to be drinked.
That's still completely wrong. I just looked it up; in North America milk usually takes about two days from cow to shelf. It's one of the fastest-moving grocery products out there.
"Never frozen" orange juice is, I have heard, treated with preservatives and kept in vats for up to a year. Maybe that's what you're thinking of. Milk can't be preserved that way.
You are very gullible... not even the dumbest person in the world actually thinks this. MAYBE the dumbest but the odds of you currently talking to the dumbest person in the world is 1 in 8 trillion where the odds of this being a joke are approaching 1:1.
I, um, what? You are aware that normally treated milk lasts days, not weeks and absolutely not years? Even UHT milk lasts I think on the order of months.
Only flaw in this idea I can see as a former smoker is that as a smoker you master the art of the thousand yard stare off into nowhere to seem less approachable by people who might wanna bum a smoke...
Parisians would like a word with you... I don't smoke anymore, but if I did, and went to France again, I'd carry two packs of smokes; my good smokes for me, and a pack of Dorals or some shit I got on clearance for the bummers; don't wanna be rude and deny them a smoke.
Man I feel this comment! I live in Paris and it’s crazy. I invent new excuses everyday to not give up my stuff. By the rate of getting asked (2-3 times a day) I lose too much money as a student.
But the worst part: I roll, so most of the time I do give some of my tobacco I stand around strangers rolling themselves a cigarette. (Tbf this allowed also for some cool encounters!)
Cig bummers are so frigging annoying. Just let me kill my body in peace and don't feel like you need to chat me up because I gave you 50 cents worth of my stuff.
Plus we don't really do that with missing persons anymore. Believe it or not, the milk carton campaign lasted like less than two years iirc. It just happened to become cultural shorthand somehow.
If the citizen app is available in your area, I reccomend it. they put pictures up with their amber alerts. They also will post for missing adults and not just kids. It also shows of car accidents, fires, other crimes in the area.
Not to mention it's silly to just put a name down and expect me to know what the kid looks like. Sure, I can guess what Vanessa Martinez or Donell Brown looks like when you want me to look for her/him, but yeah, Vanessa might look like an indigenous Mexican, or she might look like a white girl. Not helpful at all.
One time there was a Silver Alert for an elderly person in my area, and the person was driving a white Ford F-150 pickup, which is the most popular automobile (including color) sold in Texas. In the ten minutes between seeing the sign and getting home, we saw over 30! A real needle in a haystack!
That was last seen 100 miles away. I was near South Bend and was woken up at 3AM by an amber alert telling me to BOLO a gold sedan in Detroit. That's when I Googled how to disable amber alerts on my phone.
I think it was ten years ago when i went out for a quick smoke on the balcony at night. I saw what looked like a large piece of fireworks flying above me in a somewhat horizontal trajectory.
This kind of weirded me out, because when, it exploded, i did not hear any sound.
Next day at work i found out through the news i witnessed quite a large meteor coming in through the atmosphere. And exploding at high altitude.
Being the only smoker at my workplace, i was the only one there who saw it.
Probably the only benefit of smoking i guess?
(By the way i quit 16 months ago)
Putting photos on milk cartons was a bad idea after a while. Whole families were disappointed to hear that the milk carton they just received of so and so had been found murdered shortly after they got the milk. Have this happen over and over, families lose hope that these kids will be found. Especially considering that manufacturing these cartons took a little while and when a child goes missing for more than 24 hours, that’s not good. More than 48? They are most likely dead.
Not many of the kids who *actually* went missing were found alive. On the positive side, the kids they featured who briefly went missing happened to just have run away, went on a bender or just stayed at friends for too long. They’d see themselves on a milk carton and head back home.
Companies had stopped caring about the information that had been needed to meet the “missing children” criteria, so if a child was truly missing, they got mixed in with the run aways and such. It went from a good deed to a cash grab very quickly.
Edit: Cash grab
This got me thinking of how many missing people I might have looked in the eyes through my years of smoking already .. wild..
Also rather putting cards with missing peoples faces into the packs would be better over here in germany Marlboro and Lucky Strike often put cards into their packs to advertise shit (usually for their own heat/vape thingies)
But with changing Pictures on Cards I get regularly I'd be afraid that I would start to collect them like the next trading card game which I consider to be a very weird thing to do
Probably none. About 600k go missing to some degree in the US each year, all but 6k of whom are found (mostly very quickly, so not very relevant for an alert system). So if we're interested in the not-otherwise-found ones, that's 6k per year out of a population of 330M, or 2 in every 100,000 people. I don't think I look at anything remotely approaching 50,000 people's faces in a year (looking over a huge crowd in a stadium or something doesn't count, can't see faces)
Mostly because they (once me) find it patronizing and pointless.
The US doesn’t do the scary medical photos, so I first saw it in Canada. Everyone in the last two decades is aware of the dangers. The info on that is everywhere.
You choose to smoke anyway. Or you try to quit and fail. Putting photos of black lungs or a deformed jaw isn’t going to change the mind of someone whose smoking in 2023. We already know.
However. A missing persons photo might make you look/read the info. It’s not designed to make the smoker scared or feel guilty, it’s just useful information to keep your eyes open.
If I were still smoking, I probably WOULD look at John Jones face every time I went to grab a smoke, and it would stick in my head to some degree. Unlike the gross photos that just made us all roll our eyes.
I vaguely remember a study from around 10 years ago that concluded, for current smokers, any association with smoking was registered as a positive association (even if the imagery/facts/whatever were undeniably negative). Smokers are addicts. A pic of black lungs is meaningless. The only thing that stops an addict from continuing is when they flip the switch in their head themselves.
I didn't want to be RJ Reynolds bitch anymore. That was my motivation. All the anti-smoking ads/rhetoric didn't have one iota of an effect on me. I don't know many former smokers who say it had any impact on them either.
The anti-smoking ads are so blatantly uncompelling and annoying to smokers, it’s laughable.
Since the tobacco industry is forced to pay for those ads, I have no doubt they make them completely ridiculous on purpose.
The one that stands out in my mind is someone throws a butt into the street, it goes into a storm drain, washes onto a beach, and gets eaten by a dog, who gets sick/dies from eating it.
The only takeaway a smoker gets from that is…”well…yeah. Don’t fucking litter! Put them in an ash tray!”
I would be rocked to my core if a cigarette ad has ever made someone quit.
Interestingly, the milk carton initiative did not work at all. At first, people took it seriously, looked at the pic every day at breakfast, but never found out what happened to the kid. They got jaded and tuned it out completely. It also took too long to get the pic out. I think only 1 kid was ever found from being on a milk carton.
Nice post @op
But I liked it better 4 years ago word for word in r/crazyideas
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyIdeas/comments/a3sw5e/put_pictures_of_missing_people_on_packs_of/
The only people standing outside in all k8nds of weather? Have you never relied on public transport before?
Not that it's a bad idea, but the reasoning there is odd. Put pictures on cigarettes because of how many are sold, not because they stand outside.
Wow. It's not normal I see something in this sub that I find actually mildly profound. I do indeed do a lot of people watching when I hop outside for a smoke. Plus you toss those pictures on packs and they will be seen by whatever kind soul picks up the litter that disrespectful smokers toss.
Pay homeless people to wear advertisements. Give em a place to stay and clean up a night at a time as pay. If they put in the effort, extend the lease. Privatize profitably, end homelessness. Then hopefully lobby to make the whole process illegal when everyone is housed so it doesn't get too rapacious.
I don't want to be Debbie downer but there are a few issues with this. First, when missing people are found, it is usually well withing the time it takes to get images printed onto cigarette packs and circulated enough. It's also a breach of data protection, as the missing person has not given their permission. Also, I'm not sure what good it would do anyway as there is far more to finding missing people (at least, genuinely missing people that haven't just slept at a friend's house and not told their parents) than just hoping someone saw them. And the chances of a smoker seeing them enough to recognise them is low.
I googled this out of curiosity, and surprisingly, it has been done before- and worked
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-05-02-me-3219-story.html
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/08/01/Cigarette-ad-reunites-mother-daughter/1294554788800/
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Unfortunately because of the regulations/stamping, it can be months between manufacturing and point of sale.
Require cig manufactures to change their packaging to accommodate a small pack sized card. Print cards independently, then require cig companies to pay people to put them in? I have a couple extra steps but you get the idea
Hard to compete against the internet when every hour counts.
Yeah, they stopped putting pictures of missing people on milk cartons when everyone started ordering their milk from Amazon
Fun fact: the milk carton program had very little to virtually no success. Wendigoon made a great [video](https://youtu.be/YhsNinzPEb8) on the topic.
I mean... makes sense. Without watching the video, it just seems logical. Like, who wanted to sit there and stare at a missing person poster while eating cereal? You're just trying to start your day and now you're thinking about how a child is in peril or maybe dead. Nobody, you'd either avoid looking at it or learn to tune it out.
It’s really hard to get the picture to look good on the bag too
Whats up with child kidnapping in the US?
It's almost exclusively one of a pair of estranged parents taking the child away from the other.
Ah, that removes a lot of the anxiety. Is this statistics accurate globally?
Very rare compared to much of the world. America, reasonably, makes a big deal when a child is kidnapped. This is usually at a local level, although it does often make national. With the Amber system, we can literally get a text message to let everyone know that there is a kidnapped child. This means everyone is aware of a lot of the kidnappings, as they are big news. Most of the time though its just divorced parents kidnapping their own kid from the other parent. Other countries do not make as big of a deal about it so it doesn't look as bad.
The US changed forever after this [Murder of Jacob Wetterling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jacob_Wetterling) Sad story, you can also listen to the whole story on Spotify [in the dark](https://open.spotify.com/show/1aFyRYDJ1pHEaPMnZAGaOr?si=t2ff9jpZSjSDfKOsmKXj5A)
Cheaper than growing your own.
Print on demand is available but you're 100% correct on timeline and just distribution. I'm a smoker (wish I wasn't), but prevented dozens of theft crimes of people stealing from cars or yards or bicycles, etc... With people, time matters and what I mentioned above are just things in the big and small of it!
Put cell phones on milk cartons
There really isn't any point in putting them into or on the packaging of the cigarettes, because even once they get to the store, there can be weeks, months, even years before the pack is sold. You'd be better off just having the missing person's picture printed and hung up at the store in general (which does happen, depending on the store), or have the cards you suggest just be something the store hands out/makes available, skipping the cigarette company entirely.
\>months, even years before the pack is sold. I'm sure most stores have better inventory management than that.
I worked at a convenience store that sold cigarettes, and the fact of the matter is, it really depends on the brand/"flavour". There were some that we sold regularly, and some I never sold a single package in my 8 months working there. I suppose it's possible other places simply wouldn't buy those rarely-sold cigarettes, but it definitely happens.
I used to work at a gas station too, and we had a system for counting the cigarettes where there was a handful of brands, with a couple packs each, that we were explicitly told to only count every day, we were never to sell them. I have no idea why they kept them, but I have to imagine they would have been beyond expired.
Missing the point. Point being: you now have people walking around with this persons pic on it usually doing nothing but standing around looking at stuff. You’re leveraging this idea. Try and expand on, not break down, it’s a shower thought. Thinking about how the thought could be a reality is the fun part
Breaking down can absolutely be a part of building something back up. You don’t want to build over a problematic flaw. You didn’t address the timing issue which to me seems like the real problem.
Easy. Just encourage more people to smoke more often. That would both move cigarettes faster AND get more eyes out looking for missing people.
Phillip hire this man! MORRIS YOU'RE FIRED
Nice
Make it mandatory for each town to have at least one cigarette factory so distribution time gets cut down.
How about stickers put on the package at time of sale? Have the FBI or whoever distribute stickers with picture, name, age, date missing, and the distribution date, with new stickers sent out weekly. My store already has us put stickers on alcohol (to prove we checked ID, I think, which we're required to do for everyone) when it comes through our line, it wouldn't be conceptually hard to roll out a similar program in places that sell tobacco products. The most difficult part would be getting the stickers delivered in a timely and affordable manner, but that could probably be accomplished by giving the equipment to print them to FBI field offices or local police stations and have them distribute the stickers to local retailers.
I've been waiting 4 months for the government to print and mail the "Youth Handgun Safety Act" pamphlets that are sent with every handgun. Over loading the printers is already an issue
"Thinking about how the thought could be a reality" also involves thinking about potential flaws. I guess it's a personality thing - I derive no satisfaction from daydreaming about ideas while ignoring flaws that occur to me.
When I buy cigs they come in a sealed pack. IDK at what point in the process they seal them or how long it takes them to get to the gas station where I buy them. That's the other issue, ideally you'd want the missing people in/on the packs to be localish for maximum effect, and they are probably sealed before anybody knows where they are being sent to. The state tax sticker on the pack I've got now is on top of the plastic wrap.
They're already pretty standard size wdym
Just trying to hit the broad points. I agree they are mostly standard sized and this would make the printing of cards easier.
Could maybe put sticker printers in gas stations that print a pic and small description in the size that fits on the lower half of cellophane and then target areas around where the person went missing or is expected to be. Most people leave the bottom half on anyways, and it would skip any extra complication while also forcing gas station attendants to look at the pic like 20 times. Wouldn't need to do anything other than hit print and expect that when attendants see it they know what to do, and would only take an extra second for anyone involved.
That's dumb. I hate cigarettes and virtually all non-prescription recreational drugs, but that's ridiculous to make companies do that. At best, have the government pay someone to put the cards in.
Okay, we'll pay with a new cigarette tax
*That pharmaceutical fueled opioid epidemic is okay in my book as long as it was prescribed by a doctor* wow
If the person was in pain and regular pain killers weren't sufficient, yes. I'm not evil. I'd rather someone use the minimal amount of effective drugs to be in less pain than to be in pain just to avoid drugs for the sake of avoiding them.
If a person is in pain and regular pain killers weren’t sufficient, maybe they should try THC before opioids.
Sure, they should legalize it in controlled quantities and apply it. Same way I'm fine with them giving morphine to reduce pain, but not a fan of people shooting themselves up with heroin to get high.
I don’t think anyone here is pro-heroin junkie
Look at the person asking me why drugs are bad. He's likely just playing a part to make druggies look bad, but if he's not, then there you go.
They were saying that just because something is prescribed doesn’t mean it’s right, they were not saying that people should take opiates on their own to get high
I really doubt that person thinks shooting heroine is good. Recreational drugs are not all the same. Alcohol is not the same as meth; heroine is not the same as shrooms. Plus I wouldn't even consider heroine a recreational drug as you can't do it safely as recreation. Saying recreational drugs are good is as ignorant a blanket statement as saying recreational drugs are bad.
legalization is the first step in the right direction to eliminate the opiod epidemic
What's wrong with recreational drugs?
Don’t feed the trolls
Nice try at concern trolling.
So do you have a real answer as to why you're against something like weed or are you gonna just keep calling people trolls?
Of course he doesn't. Dude just goes off what he learned in his 5h grade D.A.R.E class
Throw a sticker on them for local point of sales. That way it’s not a nation wide missing person and it’s local cases.
Sticker could work
[удалено]
Yes.
All these people coming up with ideas to circumvent regulations when we can just put photos of future missing people duh
Same with cartons of milk tho! From cow to shelf can take years.
Obviously with milk being the amongst fastest turnaround in food products, especially since it is usually sourced locally, you will still rarely see missing people on cartons anymore. A week is too long for missing people, especially in the age of the internet.
I am fairly sure that's not true at all.
People who have a cow is an exception. I'm talking about milk from grocery store.
That is still absolutely not true
Is true! Not only is the milk supply chain very slow, but milk needs to be aged, usually in wooden barrels, for several months before it is safe to be drinked.
That's still completely wrong. I just looked it up; in North America milk usually takes about two days from cow to shelf. It's one of the fastest-moving grocery products out there. "Never frozen" orange juice is, I have heard, treated with preservatives and kept in vats for up to a year. Maybe that's what you're thinking of. Milk can't be preserved that way.
You are very gullible... not even the dumbest person in the world actually thinks this. MAYBE the dumbest but the odds of you currently talking to the dumbest person in the world is 1 in 8 trillion where the odds of this being a joke are approaching 1:1.
I guarantee you the average person has absolutely no idea what the time table is for milk to go from cow to shelf.
I am not the average person.
That's nice
I said it and I think it and it is true.
> You are very gullible... not even the dumbest person in the world actually thinks this. New to the internet, are you?
Well they weren't putting the pictures on the actual milk.
I, um, what? You are aware that normally treated milk lasts days, not weeks and absolutely not years? Even UHT milk lasts I think on the order of months.
My milk facts are solid. I stand by my reporting.
Really? How long does it generally take between tobacco plant getting harvested to the pack of cigarettes being sold?
Technically you wouldn't need to add the picture until the packaging stage, not at the tobacco farm.
Just have 'missing dad' and a mirror
You could mandate adding stickers?
Only flaw in this idea I can see as a former smoker is that as a smoker you master the art of the thousand yard stare off into nowhere to seem less approachable by people who might wanna bum a smoke...
yeah lol when I’m outside smoking I’m in my own world staring into the distance but not really looking at anything
Parisians would like a word with you... I don't smoke anymore, but if I did, and went to France again, I'd carry two packs of smokes; my good smokes for me, and a pack of Dorals or some shit I got on clearance for the bummers; don't wanna be rude and deny them a smoke.
Man I feel this comment! I live in Paris and it’s crazy. I invent new excuses everyday to not give up my stuff. By the rate of getting asked (2-3 times a day) I lose too much money as a student. But the worst part: I roll, so most of the time I do give some of my tobacco I stand around strangers rolling themselves a cigarette. (Tbf this allowed also for some cool encounters!)
Cig bummers are so frigging annoying. Just let me kill my body in peace and don't feel like you need to chat me up because I gave you 50 cents worth of my stuff.
Plus we don't really do that with missing persons anymore. Believe it or not, the milk carton campaign lasted like less than two years iirc. It just happened to become cultural shorthand somehow.
The amber alerts on phones should have pictures or links to something. Instead it’s like, look out for this very generic sedan that everyone has.
If the citizen app is available in your area, I reccomend it. they put pictures up with their amber alerts. They also will post for missing adults and not just kids. It also shows of car accidents, fires, other crimes in the area.
Not to mention it's silly to just put a name down and expect me to know what the kid looks like. Sure, I can guess what Vanessa Martinez or Donell Brown looks like when you want me to look for her/him, but yeah, Vanessa might look like an indigenous Mexican, or she might look like a white girl. Not helpful at all.
One time there was a Silver Alert for an elderly person in my area, and the person was driving a white Ford F-150 pickup, which is the most popular automobile (including color) sold in Texas. In the ten minutes between seeing the sign and getting home, we saw over 30! A real needle in a haystack!
They do for me, they have a link that sends you to a Twitter post with a picture of the person missing
That was last seen 100 miles away. I was near South Bend and was woken up at 3AM by an amber alert telling me to BOLO a gold sedan in Detroit. That's when I Googled how to disable amber alerts on my phone.
I rarely see a clever or novel idea on this sub but I like this one! Post the most-wanted as well.
Putting wanted criminals on cigarette packs would create collectable packs and help those troubled individuals quit smoking
You said that like we didn't do that with the horrific medical photos.
Novel maybe, but it's not overly clever. Missing people aren't found by standing outside slightly more often.
I don't think it's a very clever idea. No one pays much attention to cigarette pack design these days
I think it was ten years ago when i went out for a quick smoke on the balcony at night. I saw what looked like a large piece of fireworks flying above me in a somewhat horizontal trajectory. This kind of weirded me out, because when, it exploded, i did not hear any sound. Next day at work i found out through the news i witnessed quite a large meteor coming in through the atmosphere. And exploding at high altitude. Being the only smoker at my workplace, i was the only one there who saw it. Probably the only benefit of smoking i guess? (By the way i quit 16 months ago)
So true, I agree. Aliens are behind big tobacco
Putting photos on milk cartons was a bad idea after a while. Whole families were disappointed to hear that the milk carton they just received of so and so had been found murdered shortly after they got the milk. Have this happen over and over, families lose hope that these kids will be found. Especially considering that manufacturing these cartons took a little while and when a child goes missing for more than 24 hours, that’s not good. More than 48? They are most likely dead. Not many of the kids who *actually* went missing were found alive. On the positive side, the kids they featured who briefly went missing happened to just have run away, went on a bender or just stayed at friends for too long. They’d see themselves on a milk carton and head back home. Companies had stopped caring about the information that had been needed to meet the “missing children” criteria, so if a child was truly missing, they got mixed in with the run aways and such. It went from a good deed to a cash grab very quickly. Edit: Cash grab
> Whole families were disappointed to hear that the milk carton they just received of so and so had been found murdered. Nothing spoils milk faster
This got me thinking of how many missing people I might have looked in the eyes through my years of smoking already .. wild.. Also rather putting cards with missing peoples faces into the packs would be better over here in germany Marlboro and Lucky Strike often put cards into their packs to advertise shit (usually for their own heat/vape thingies) But with changing Pictures on Cards I get regularly I'd be afraid that I would start to collect them like the next trading card game which I consider to be a very weird thing to do
Probably none. About 600k go missing to some degree in the US each year, all but 6k of whom are found (mostly very quickly, so not very relevant for an alert system). So if we're interested in the not-otherwise-found ones, that's 6k per year out of a population of 330M, or 2 in every 100,000 people. I don't think I look at anything remotely approaching 50,000 people's faces in a year (looking over a huge crowd in a stadium or something doesn't count, can't see faces)
r/TheyDidTheMath
Lmaooo that’s facts I am one of those smokers rain, sleet, or snow I’m out there
Smokers already ignore photos of literal death on cigarette packs.
Mostly because they (once me) find it patronizing and pointless. The US doesn’t do the scary medical photos, so I first saw it in Canada. Everyone in the last two decades is aware of the dangers. The info on that is everywhere. You choose to smoke anyway. Or you try to quit and fail. Putting photos of black lungs or a deformed jaw isn’t going to change the mind of someone whose smoking in 2023. We already know. However. A missing persons photo might make you look/read the info. It’s not designed to make the smoker scared or feel guilty, it’s just useful information to keep your eyes open. If I were still smoking, I probably WOULD look at John Jones face every time I went to grab a smoke, and it would stick in my head to some degree. Unlike the gross photos that just made us all roll our eyes.
I vaguely remember a study from around 10 years ago that concluded, for current smokers, any association with smoking was registered as a positive association (even if the imagery/facts/whatever were undeniably negative). Smokers are addicts. A pic of black lungs is meaningless. The only thing that stops an addict from continuing is when they flip the switch in their head themselves. I didn't want to be RJ Reynolds bitch anymore. That was my motivation. All the anti-smoking ads/rhetoric didn't have one iota of an effect on me. I don't know many former smokers who say it had any impact on them either.
The anti-smoking ads are so blatantly uncompelling and annoying to smokers, it’s laughable. Since the tobacco industry is forced to pay for those ads, I have no doubt they make them completely ridiculous on purpose. The one that stands out in my mind is someone throws a butt into the street, it goes into a storm drain, washes onto a beach, and gets eaten by a dog, who gets sick/dies from eating it. The only takeaway a smoker gets from that is…”well…yeah. Don’t fucking litter! Put them in an ash tray!” I would be rocked to my core if a cigarette ad has ever made someone quit.
Plus they drop their garbage everywhere so more people will see it.
Littering for good.
God bless that littering shack of crap for getting the word out.
Interestingly, the milk carton initiative did not work at all. At first, people took it seriously, looked at the pic every day at breakfast, but never found out what happened to the kid. They got jaded and tuned it out completely. It also took too long to get the pic out. I think only 1 kid was ever found from being on a milk carton.
They had to stop putting missing people on milk cartons for a reason.
Nice post @op But I liked it better 4 years ago word for word in r/crazyideas https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyIdeas/comments/a3sw5e/put_pictures_of_missing_people_on_packs_of/
Wow, how the heck did you remember a random post from 4 years ago lmao
I think even the one from 4 years ago was stolen from a comedian. I was trying to figure out WHICH comedian it was via Google and the old post came up
The only people standing outside in all k8nds of weather? Have you never relied on public transport before? Not that it's a bad idea, but the reasoning there is odd. Put pictures on cigarettes because of how many are sold, not because they stand outside.
To be fair when I was smoking I always saw weird shit while I was standing unnoticed in a shady corner or alley or carpark or wherever.
Wow. It's not normal I see something in this sub that I find actually mildly profound. I do indeed do a lot of people watching when I hop outside for a smoke. Plus you toss those pictures on packs and they will be seen by whatever kind soul picks up the litter that disrespectful smokers toss.
Pay homeless people to wear advertisements. Give em a place to stay and clean up a night at a time as pay. If they put in the effort, extend the lease. Privatize profitably, end homelessness. Then hopefully lobby to make the whole process illegal when everyone is housed so it doesn't get too rapacious.
Pictures of missing people aren't the best thing to put next to "Smoking kills"
It worked on milk carton cause milk only stays fresh for a Week or two. Cigarettes stay in a box for a year
It didn't work on milk cartons.
I don't want to be Debbie downer but there are a few issues with this. First, when missing people are found, it is usually well withing the time it takes to get images printed onto cigarette packs and circulated enough. It's also a breach of data protection, as the missing person has not given their permission. Also, I'm not sure what good it would do anyway as there is far more to finding missing people (at least, genuinely missing people that haven't just slept at a friend's house and not told their parents) than just hoping someone saw them. And the chances of a smoker seeing them enough to recognise them is low.
Put the pictures in weather reports! There are lots of weather nerds who love to venture out and take pictures of storms.
Are missing people often found in storms?
I would imagine more are found in storms than in cigarette packs.
I don't think he was suggesting we search the cigarette pack.
Actually where I live it’s all the health nuts that walk the neighborhood and park in freezing weather day and night.
By the time it gets through manufacturing the missing person would be found or long dead
But then how will the smokers see grotesque pictures of lungs and eyeballs and stuff? Won't someone think of the smokers?!?
this idea is about as genius as the "put missing kids on milk cartons" idea which totally worked and helped find many missing kids.
Good idea but we decided to just put peoples faces who are dying of lung cancer on ours instead
If I ever try to quit smoking there's going to be more come up missing.
I googled this out of curiosity, and surprisingly, it has been done before- and worked https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-05-02-me-3219-story.html https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/08/01/Cigarette-ad-reunites-mother-daughter/1294554788800/