NumBytes 16: An Inconvenient Death

For convenience stores, the US Food and Drug Administration's intensified war on cigarettes will cut into sales, but not until October 2012. That's when the new, improved, and particularly graphic, make that photographic, images of a tracheostomy, lung cancer, and other aspects of death are stuck onto cigarette packaging. About 20% of high-school students smoke, which is close to the 20.6% of adults who smoke, but evidently, they need pictures because they can't read the surgeon general's warning or don't understand that tobacco is linked to 443,000 premature deaths per year among the nation's 46 million smokers. According to FDA projections, the new labels will reduce the number of smokers by 213,000 during the first year of use.