Australian Cartoonist Claims Denial Of Satirical Packaging Gig This not-exactly-comics story about cartoonist Bill Leak and his desire to do satirical packaging to slip over mandated real-consequence tobacco packaging in Australia intrigues me in a couple of ways. The first is the story as presented by Leak, that he's not being allowed to provide the fake packaging because doing so would interfere with the government's program to use the surface of those products to promote a health message. The second is that the reason given for Leak's withdrawal from these plans is the threat of legal action. I imagine this would be extremely difficult to quantify. I'm also not all the way certain that being able to do what you do without any threat of legal reprisal is a reasonable standard for indicting the state as something that is keeping you from doing something.
