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Cigarette-box labels will get a gruesome redesign
By Carly PiferJune 21st, 2011, 5:22 pmComments (18)
Still a proud smoker? Your favorite box just got a rather gruesome makeover. Today, the FDA debuted package warning-labels predicting your horrific future if you continue to smoke, showing images of rotting and diseased gums, a man smoking through his tracheotomy hole, a re-stitched corpse, and a woman crying. (Cigarettes: they ruin your teeth and make unknown women weep.)
The trouble is, the labels, while gross, aren't proven to work. In fact, some would say, they're so hyperbolic that they don't seem real. I'll admit, I kind of felt the same way. (That guy isn't really smoking through a hole in his throat. And if he is, he's nothing like me; he's a crazy person.) You can check out the whole series of ugly new warnings here.
The FDA, however, is certain their labels work. The first smoking regulation came in 1965, when cigarette companies were forced to include the phrase "Cigarettes may be harmful to your health" on packages. Since that year, the number of Americans who smoke has fallen from about forty percent to twenty percent. In 2004, it stopped dropping.
And so the FDA decided to up the ante: more graphic detail; tears, babies, and other things that are major turn-offs. The FDA is so confident their labels will work, they've even provided a "quit smoking hotline number" to aid in the quick conversion.
Labels aside, if you've been thinking about quitting, it seems there's no better time than now. What with these eye-sores on your packs, the soaring cost of cigarettes on U.S. major cities, and New York's recent controversial ban on smoking in parks, where do all the smokers go? Apparently, we should all meet to discuss it over cigarettes, somewhere in South Carolina.
Commentarium (18 Comments)
I don't know how I feel about this. I guess if they were to make this kind of campaign I agree the way they are doing it is way too hyperbolic. Instead, it should have actual statistics like, "Each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke, and another 8.6 million live with a serious illness caused by smoking" (CDC, 2011).
Catchy. You should get a job in advertising.
As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Now thinking about it again, I think it is kind of dumb to put those on cigarette packages, but then, I don't smoke, so I don't care.
why don't they do that on booze?
Because more people die of smoking.
That'll stop kids from smoking.
Once the collect all the different warnings.
They'll be like baseball cards.
"I'll give you three yellowed teeth for a carcinoma of the lung"
They have been doing this in Canada for years. Except our warnings say "Smoking Causes Impotence" and has a limp cigarette ash image... And "Smoking Causes Strokes" and a picture of a dissected human brain. And a picture of a pregnant woman smoking too! Teens will still smoke for the same reasons adults do; because a super cool Camel in sunglasses told them to.
its been happening in australia for years. and now they're doing that AND they're putting cigarettes in plain packaging. seriously, its stupid. smoking is a choice goddamn it.
true, smoking is a choice. but subisiding the health care costs of smokers isn't
That's a myth, smokers die young and even the cost of heroic efforts to save their lives doesn't add up to the ongoing costs of keep a senior citizen living well into their 80's which is what we have happening now.
My grand parents have 6-7 prescriptions each, month after month. Almost weekly visits to a Dr. along with assorted surgeries over the years. All of this on medicare.
How much of a choice is smoking? It's not really an informed choice. In this day and age, where information is explicit (regarding health risks), choosing to smoke may be equated to suicide. Still doesn't make it an informed or rational choice though, does it? Addicts will always rationalise their habit.
Big Tobacco (as well as the hypocritical governments that profit from it through tax revenue) is evil in the sense that it has not only maintained and facilitated addiction (addition of ammonia in tobacco facilitates more nicotine release -it's a chemical reaction - and affects the neurological aspect of addiction - increase chemical receptors). To say that smoking is a choice is being misinformed.
As for whether these gruesome images on packets and plain packaging work? They don't work. Smokers can always purchase cigarettes and transfer them into alternative packages. The way I see it, these gruesome graphics and plain paper packaging have only made the cigarette cases of old fashionable again.
Governments, including the Australian government, are only deceiving the population when they say that these strategies will reduce smoking. They won't. More teenagers are starting to smoke - a decade after the lawsuits. It's not like they're living in an era where the adverse effects of smoking (lung cancer) were hidden by Big Tobacco, as they were in the 60s and 70s, when companies like Philip Morris had research that showed the link between lung cancer and tobacco (by using/forcing beagles to inhale tobacco smoke).
So if you're a homosexual smoker, you've been really screwed from a biological standpoint.
Just a picture or graphic of an eye would be more effective.
Excellent point!
I honestly don't know what the solution is. Both my parents died young from tobacco-related cancer. I wonder if graphic packages would have saved them. I don't think it would have made a difference. Whatevs--at the end of the day all I can hope is that, like me, my own kid chooses not to smoke. We're all going to die one day. It just seems sort of wasteful to die of emphysema or cancer that's spread from your lungs to your stomach and spine etc, etc, or to not be able to play with your grandkids b/c you're hooked up to an oxygen tank. Smoking is a lot like drug addiction or obesity--just a horrible testimony to how weakness of character can lead to a shortened life span and cause suffering to those around you.
Whoa there, Tex. Let's not confuse "weakness of character" with a chemical or hormonal imbalance, which is what often leads to or is caused by drug addiction. Not touching obesity, but even some of those folks weren't necessarily given the choice to be fat or not. Most have the option, but not all.
I suppose that snodus and smells just about right.