Rochelle Riley

It is the most monumental and historic and important announcement in the history of the world.  The federal government is going to require cigarette-makers, eventually, to post one of nine graphic images on its packages to warn Americans against the dangers of smoking.

Oh yeah, that’ll stop it.

The news was presented as landmark because it’s the first change in tobacco warnings in a quarter century. But what does that actually mean: That the federal government has pretty much done nothing to end the unhealthy scourge of smoking in a quarter century.

This despite medical reports showing the damage done to nonsmokers by secondhand smoke.

This despite statistics showing that 443,000 American die smoking-related deaths every year.

This despite the fact that smoking contributes to many chronic diseases that raise national health care costs. Smoking-related diseases led to $96 billion in health care costs last year, much of it paid by taxpayers

The color images, which made the morning shows, most newspapers and the nightly news, feature images from the real deal: a man with a large scar down his chest, breathing with an oxygen mask, a man blowing smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat.

Cigarette package messages haven’t changed much since 1966, two years after U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry first warned that cigarettes could be hazardous to your health.  It took two years for his warning to get on the packages. Current cig makers will get about the same amount of time to create new packages.

Twenty percent of the U.S. population is killing itself with cigarettes, and the biggest growth is in young people – 4,000 teens a day light up. The children don’t believe that cigarettes kill any more than they believe that sex produces babies.

Lawrence R. Deyton of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products told the Washingtoni Post that the campaign features images that people can’t forget, not images that people want to forget. That’s why they include a man in an oxygen mask but not one in a coffin.

“We’re trying to use a set of images here that speak to the widest population in the country,” he told the Post.

But the images that matter most are those kids see in videos, movies and on TV.

Until it becomes cool not to kill yourself with smoke, one can only hope that these new graphic pictures will be a warning and not just something to pass around on Facebook.

One can only hope.

It’s almost time.

As we’ve rushed to watch the movies nominated for an Academy Award, as we’ve made plans for what to serve at our Oscar parties and as we prepare to settle in and watch the annual distribution of accolades and street cred, if your streets intersect at Hollywood and Vine, I want to salute those whose best work gets them no awards. I want to salute those whose victories are the victories of others – teachers.

This has been a hard year for teachers, partly because of the deeper examination of their work that is being done by various universities, institutions and filmmakers.

Any indictment of school systems, even the entire American system as analyzed by the documentary “Waiting for Superman,” is an indictment of teachers and principals and aides. Problem is: indicting with a broad brush puts bad paint on good teachers, on teachers who begin their days hours early and end them hours later because they get it.

They get that the products they’re working with aren’t cars or shopping carts or widgets. They are literally building America. They are molding future senators and presidents and astronauts. They, most of all, are developing future parents.

So as you watch Sunday night to see whose performance was best, whose film was best, whose work was most celebrated, take a moment to honor those whose work is to get best performances out of others.

Maybe we should get them to dress up one night, walk a red carpet and receive trophies for the thankless job they do. Right now, they get to watch their products get diplomas. But some teachers deserve diplomas – and awards – of their own.