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Cigarette packets to carry graphic photo warnings
27/09/2008
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| Graphic pictures of throat cancer and rotting teeth are to appear on cigarette packets from next month to illustrate the health risks of smoking, the Department of Health (DoH) announced today. |
Among the other images smokers will see are rotting lungs, a corpse in a morgue and a body cut open during surgery.
The UK is the first country in the EU to introduce the photo warnings, which will be manufactured on cigarette packets from October 1.
The warnings will extend to all cigarette packets by October 2009 and other tobacco products from October 2010.
The photos will appear on the back of packets accompanied by a written health warning.
They replace the previous warnings introduced in January 2003, although the messages ´Smoking kills´ and ´Smoking seriously harms you and others around you´ will continue to appear on the front of packets.
New figures showed written warnings had motivated more than 90,000 smokers to call the NHS Smoking Helpline, the DoH said.
However smoking is still the biggest killer in England where it causes the premature death of more than 87,000 people each year.
The photos are expected to be more effective than text, and research suggested that warnings should be changed periodically to maintain their effectiveness, the DoH said.
Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said: "I welcome the introduction of picture warnings on tobacco product packaging, which show smokers the grim reality of the effects smoking can have on their health.
"This will help to maintain the momentum of the increasing number of people who have given up smoking following England going smoke free in 2007.
"Written health warnings have encouraged many smokers to stop smoking. These new stark picture warnings emphasise the harsh health realities of continuing to smoke. I hope they will make many more think hard about giving up, and get the help they need to stop smoking for good."
The smokers´ lobby group Forest criticised the new warnings as "unnecessarily intrusive" and "gratuitously offensive".
Forest director Simon Clark said: "We support measures that educate people about the health risks of smoking, but these pictures are designed not just to educate but to shock and coerce people to give up a legal product.
"They are unnecessarily intrusive, gratuitously offensive, and yet another example of smokers being singled out for special attention.
"The government seems determined to humiliate smokers until they behave in a state-approved way. Well it won´t work. Far from giving up, most smokers are likely to say enough is enough and reach for their fags in defiance."
Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) director Deborah Arnott said: "The stark images in the picture warnings on tobacco products are a call to action to smokers to quit, and the evidence is that they work.
"The evidence also shows that picture warnings work better on plain packs, so we are urging the Government to also implement legislation to require the removal of pack branding to maximise the impact of the these images."
Ash said an obvious disadvantage was that the picture warnings would only appear on the back of packs, and said there was a strong case for increasing the area devoted to health warnings.
Tobacco Manufacturers´ Association chief executive Christopher Ogden said: "While we welcome any sensible measures that will assist in achieving public health objectives, any new initiative should be supported by credible evidence that it will address the Government´s stated goals. We do not believe that this is the case with regard to pictorial health warnings.
"Over the last 15 months a number of initiatives, such as the public place smoking ban, the rise in minimum age from 16 to 18, legislation providing for sanctions against retailers who make underage sales and now pictorial health warnings, have been introduced with the objective of reducing the prevalence of smoking.
"But we are calling on the Government to make sure their impact is assessed properly before embarking on any further initiatives, such as the display ban on tobacco products. Otherwise they run the risk of creating serious unintended consequences that can work against the objectives of the Government."
British Lung Foundation chief executive Dame Helena Shovelton said: "These images are a stark reminder that we can´t treat our lungs as if they were Hoover bags, able to filter out harmful substances like cigarette smoke.
"Smoking causes disabling lung diseases like COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and kills more than 120,000 people in the UK each year.
"We hope these images will underline that more effectively than written messages."
Canada was the first country to introduce picture warnings in 2001.
Research a year later found 31 per cent of ex-smokers said the images had motivated them to quit the habit while 27% said they had helped them to remain non-smokers, according to the DoH.
Graphic images are now used on tobacco products sold in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, Venezuela, Thailand and Uruguay.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/cigarette-packets-to-carry-graphic-photo-warnings-944263.html |
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