Editing Health Warnings
From TobaccoControl Tactics
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
− | How acceptable is it for | + | How acceptable is it for alleged civilized societies to force a legal industry to plaster cigarette packages with medical pornography that countries such as Canada and Australia have adopted? How would the public feel if aborted fetuses were plastered on condom dispensers, dismembered bodies were painted on every automobile, or billboards showing smashed skulls appeared along the lengths of every ski slope? |
But even if one believes that the ends justify these barbaric means, how effective are these warnings in scaring people into not starting smoking or stopping? Let's hear what the experts have to say: | But even if one believes that the ends justify these barbaric means, how effective are these warnings in scaring people into not starting smoking or stopping? Let's hear what the experts have to say: | ||
− | Excerpt from: [http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/3/329.2.full | + | Excerpt from: [http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/3/329.2.full Saying is not (always) doing: cigarette warning labels are useless] |
:''In summary, high personal relevance (smoking), in combination with low self-efficacy for the recommended action (quitting), leads to defensive reactions as a result of fear-arousing messages. This ‘psychological immune system’ helps in maintaining a positive self-image and may operate largely outside of awareness. Defensive reactions serve to get rid of the fear, not necessarily the threat. Policy makers should thus be reluctant to introduce cigarette warning labels and should instead focus on more effective interventions and policies.:'' | :''In summary, high personal relevance (smoking), in combination with low self-efficacy for the recommended action (quitting), leads to defensive reactions as a result of fear-arousing messages. This ‘psychological immune system’ helps in maintaining a positive self-image and may operate largely outside of awareness. Defensive reactions serve to get rid of the fear, not necessarily the threat. Policy makers should thus be reluctant to introduce cigarette warning labels and should instead focus on more effective interventions and policies.:'' | ||
− | In fact, according to | + | In fact, according to this study [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21262256 The effect of pictorial warnings on cigarette packages on attentional bias of smokers], those who are more at risk for smoking related diseases -- the heavy smokers -- in an effort to alleviate the anxiety these warnings cause them, crave cigarettes even more. |
:''Psychometric measures on anxiety and nicotine craving were administered. Light smokers showed an attentional bias towards packages without pictorial warnings while no effects were observed in the other groups. In heavy smokers attention allocation towards pictorial health warnings was associated with an increase of craving and anxiety. The results have a potential public health perspective as pictorial health warnings might be an effective strategy to reduce attentional bias towards cigarette packages of light smokers, while counterproductive effects in heavy smokers warrant further investigation. :'' | :''Psychometric measures on anxiety and nicotine craving were administered. Light smokers showed an attentional bias towards packages without pictorial warnings while no effects were observed in the other groups. In heavy smokers attention allocation towards pictorial health warnings was associated with an increase of craving and anxiety. The results have a potential public health perspective as pictorial health warnings might be an effective strategy to reduce attentional bias towards cigarette packages of light smokers, while counterproductive effects in heavy smokers warrant further investigation. :'' | ||
− | + | *'''"Plain Packaging"''' | |
− | + | Complicating problems noted above are recent attempts by Tobacco Control to mandate so-called plain packaging. The cigarette packet designs advocated would very certainly not be "plain" as they would still glare with Tobacco Control's ever-favored and positively nauseous color photos (a couple of examples below on this page) of diseased body parts or corpses. | |
− | + | What these proposed cigarette packs would change, or rather remove, are the identifying typefaces and "logos" of individual brands appearing on the smaller portion of the pack remaining below the horrific image. Brand names would have to appear only in standardized typeface and only in black and white. | |
+ | Apart from utterly incinerating the principle of intellectual property rights, and creating another practical horror for shop owners attempting to sort and distribute packets according to their brands, these "plain" packets would benefit nothing and nobody (excepting of course today's many busy cigarette counterfeiters, who would necessarily delight in having but one packet style to forge, in the place of dozens.) | ||
+ | |||
+ | "Plain packaging" proposals descend precipitously on the slippery slope to government tyranny over all matters of personal choice and lifestyle. Author [http://www.adamsmith.org/research/reports/plain-packaging Christopher Snowdon has written perceptively] on the subject. | ||
===European health warnings=== | ===European health warnings=== | ||
− | In 2003, new | + | In 2003, new E.U. regulations required that one of two general warnings must be displayed, covering at least 30% of the surface on one side of the packet, with one of fourteen additional messages covering at least 40% of the other side of the packet. |
− | Readers of this website may note | + | Readers of this website may note - browse appropriate site portals regarding the varied warnings - that all of the seventeen imposed messages shown below are alarmist: either outright falsehoods or intentionally misleading suggestions and exaggerations. |
− | |||
− | |||
The two general messages: | The two general messages: | ||
Line 55: | Line 56: | ||
[[File: Australia-mouth-small.jpg ]] | [[File: Australia-mouth-small.jpg ]] | ||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− |