Everybody who smokes, sells cigarettes and lives with and around smokers are familiar with this generally weak and vague warning sign in cigarette packs. Cigarette factories continue to rake in billions of dollars in revenue each year, hospital beds continue to receive patients —smokers and non-smokers with cigarette-related illness, and tombstones continue to spring up in cemeteries as more people die from cigarette-caused and related illnesses.
The days of these vague health warnings are numbered. Three weeks from now, or on June 22, 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be coming out with final regulations to unveil and advertise the real dangers of smoking in each pack of cigarettes, and in cigarette advertisements.
In its campaign to make a bring change and create an impact in the staggering figures of cigarette-related deaths for the next 25 years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a new tobacco strategy and proposed new graphics and warnings for cigarette packs and advertisements in November last year. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act would require cigarette manufacturers to show the nine new visible and colored graphic health warnings showing the real dangers and consequences of cigarettes.
After the FDA issues the final regulations on June 22, cigarette manufacturers will be required to use the new labels by September 22, 2012, or 15 months after issuance of the final rule.
The FDA opened to the public for comments as to what should be included in the final rules regarding the graphic warnings at its Web site www.regulations.gov, through fax messages, mail or hand delivery/courier from November 12 last year to January 11, 2011.
The FDA will be releasing a final version of the rules that will include one formatting option on each of the nine sets of graphic and textual warnings which will make it clearly visible to everyone.
The proposed rule requires that the nine graphic health warnings should appear at least in the top half of on the upper portion of the front and back panels of each cigarette package. For advertisements, the graphic health warnings should appear and occupy at least 20 percent of the advertisement.
The new graphic warnings on cigarette packs and advertisements will unveil the ugly truth about cigarettes and the risks smokers and second-hand smokers will suffer.
In a year’s time, there will be no more of those mild and ineffective “Cigarette smoking may be harmful to your health” signs but the labels will shout clear messages that should scare a smoker and make him/her think twice before picking up a pack of cigarettes from the store.
To encourage smokers to quit, and discourage kids and non-smokers from even starting with the habit, FDA will be choosing nine colorful graphics from over 30 proposed images to go with these hard-hitting warnings:
WARNING: Cigarettes are addictive.
WARNING: Tobacco smoke can harm your children.
WARNING: Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease.
WARNING: Cigarettes cause cancer.
WARNING: Cigarettes cause strokes and heart disease.
WARNING: Smoking during pregnancy can harm your baby.
WARNING: Smoking can kill you.
WARNING: Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers.
WARNING: Quitting smoking now greatly reduces serious risks to your health.
For more information, visit www.hhs.gov/tobaccocontrol/index.html or call HHS Press Office at (202) 690-6343.
