HABERMAN: New York City's In-Your-Face Antismoking Campaign  

Before too long, you may be forced to stare at a photo of blackened lungs, oozing decay, every time you go to the bodega for a quart of milk. We're trying to figure out where under the heading of quality of life to file this bit of news.

The photo is the latest idea from the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, part of its nonstop campaign to acquaint the citizenry with the wickedness of smoking. Show smokers right there at the checkout counter how much gunk coats their lungs and maybe they will reconsider plunking down that Hamilton for a pack of cigarettes. That's the theory.

You might have thought that by now, even the most benighted smoker must know that the habit is destructive, no matter how satisfying in the short term. We've only had decades of government warnings on cigarette packs . . .

Well before the government first ordered those warnings, in 1964, cigarettes were routinely referred to as cancer sticks and coffin nails. Those were not intended as phrases of affection. . . .

The thing is, though, that despite his department's estimate that a million New Yorkers continue to smoke, most of us don't. Yet under the proposed new regulations, anyone who goes to the corner store will have to look at blackened lungs and possibly more. An assistant health commissioner, Sarah B. Perl, was quoted in The Daily News as saying that people are going to see what cancer of the mouth and the throat look like.

Really now, is it necessary to be subjected to such photos when all you want is a carton of orange juice? . . .

Why stop with cigarettes?

Why not require pictures of morbidly obese people at candy counters

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