Is this line familiar? For smokers, and for those who live with smokers, yes. You hear this line at the end of a cigarette advertisement on the radio or television. You see this and other warnings in billboards and reading materials advertising cigarettes.
But is this warning enough to scare the living daylights out of smokers to prompt them to stop? Not quite so. In fact, for most smokers, these warnings in the labels carry no threat but are just part of the printing.
These warnings used to be tucked away in some corner of the label that is hard to read, and written in not-so specific words that bears no weight to the smoker.
Smokers generally don’t have time to analyze what those small letters in these warnings mean, and if they take time to read beyond the fine lines, they will not usually take these warnings seriously. They just wanted to get down to business and smoke.
Warnings on the cigarette labels have evolved from the mild, slightly suggestive, then to puzzles where the consumer is presented with several possible effects of smoking but without really supplying the vital information and omitting the naked truth.
Mild cautions on cigarette packs include CAUTION: CIGARETTE SMOKING MAY BE HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH.
This is better than no warning at all but still this is ineffective.
The second attempt at a labeling grew a little bit stronger, such as this: WARNING: THE SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED THAT CIGARETTE SMOKING IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH.
About 443,000 premature deaths every year in the United States can be attributed to tobacco use. 30 percent of all cancer deaths are caused by tobacco, and each day, tobacco-related diseases claim 1,200 lives across the nation each day.
The statistics are gruesome. 1,000 of the 4,000 kids that try their first puff each day become regular smokers, according to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Each tobacco pack carries some warning or another of danger signals, but still the number of smokers remains high. This could only mean that the warnings are not “scary” enough.
How would you like to see signs on cigarette packs that advertise in screaming letters the following warnings from the Food and Drug Administration? Look at these warning examples:
FDA EXTREME HAZARD ALERT: Smoking Cigarettes Will Utterly Wreck Your Life? (Diseases Listed on Pack) Dial 1-800-FDA-#### for Help and Information.
Or this:
FDA SHOCK MEMORANDUM: Do Get Rid of This Pack. Cigarette Smoking Addicts, Causes Impotence, Disfigures, and Is A Painful Suicide.
Or this:
FDA DAMAGE ADVISORY: Cigarette Smoke Destroys Children’s Health. From Conception to Birth to Adolescence To Maturity. Responsible Mothers and Fathers Do Not Smoke Cigarettes.
Or would you still buy cigarettes if the label depicts the face of somebody who has had oral or throat surgery because of tobacco, or perhaps a picture of the scarred lungs of somebody who is a smoker?
Perhaps you would think twice before picking a cigarette pack or taking a puff from a stick.
Good news
But these obscure warnings that mask the dangers of smoking will soon be over.
On November 10, 2010 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.
Graphics that advertise the real danger of tobacco will be required from manufacturers — a move that is hoped to help smokers to quit, and discourage children from even starting the habit.
By June 22, 2011, expect bigger, more colorful and glaring graphics that shouts the message and advertises the dangers in graphics to the smokers. The department expects this strategy will create an impact resulting to change in the next 25 years.
This new strategy proposes that by 2012, FDA will chose nine new large, noticeable warning statements and color graphic images that will depict all the dangers of tobacco in each pack of cigarettes distributed for sale.
Now, 36 proposed images are available for public comment through January 9, 2011. In June next year, after a meticulous selection process, public comments and personal study, FDA will choose final nine warnings — both textual and graphics.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that the final rule will be implemented on September 22, 2012 where manufacturing companies of tobacco will have no choice but to put the new graphic and textual warnings on the labels of cigarettes for sale.
Manufacturers and distributors will also no longer be allowed to advertise cigarettes without using the new graphic health warnings. By the time this rule takes effect, every individual who picks up a pack of cigarettes knows that the consequences are with every puff he or she takes.
For more information, visit www.hhs.gov/tobaccocontrol/index.html or call the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ press office at (202) 690-6343.
