Health Warnings

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:

Excerpt from: 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 fact, according to this study 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. :

• "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 Christopher Snowdon has written perceptively on the subject.

European health warnings

In 2003, new E.U. regulations required one of the following general warnings must be displayed, covering at least 30% of the surface of the pack:

• Smoking kills
• Smoking seriously harms you and others around you

Additionally, one of the following additional warnings must be displayed, covering at least 40% of the surface of the pack:

• Smokers die younger
• Smoking clogs the arteries and causes heart attacks and strokes
• Smoking causes fatal lung cancer
• Smoking when pregnant harms your baby
• Protect children: don't make them breathe your smoke
• Your doctor or your pharmacist can help you stop smoking
• Smoking is highly addictive, don't start
• Stopping smoking reduces the risk of fatal heart and lung diseases
• Smoking can cause a slow and painful death
• Get help to stop smoking: [telephone]/[postal address]/[internet address]/consult your doctor/pharmacist
• Smoking may reduce the blood flow and cause impotence
• Smoking causes ageing of the skin
• Smoking can damage the sperm and decreases fertility
• Smoke contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide

Medical pornography Canadian style

Medical pornography Australian style