Get Ready for Gruesome Cigarette Warnings

Source: Yahoo News

Would a gruesome picture of a cancer-ravaged mouth with rotting teeth make you think twice about buying a pack of cigarettes? That's the goal of new federal regulations expected to go into effect within three years. The rules will require tobacco companies to cover at least half of the front and back of packages with graphic -- and possibly gruesome -- images illustrating the dangers of smoking.

If U.S. regulations are modeled after those already in place in Canada and other countries, the warnings will be shocking: blackened lungs, gangrenous feet, bleeding brains and people breathing through tracheotomies. Though hard to look at, the more graphic the image, the more effective in discouraging smoking, said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and director of the university's Center for Tobacco Control, Research and Education.

"The graphic warnings really work," Glantz said. "They substantially increase the likelihood someone will quit smoking. They substantially decrease the chances a kid will smoke. And they really screw up the ability of the tobacco industry to use the packaging as a marketing tool." Over the last decade, countries as varied as Canada, Australia, Chile, Brazil, Iran and Singapore, among others, have adopted graphic warnings on tobacco products. Some are downright disturbing: in Brazil, cigarette packages come with pictures of dead babies and a gangrened foot with blackened toes.

In the United States, the authority to force packaging changes was granted on June 22, when President Barack Obama, who has struggled with cigarette addiction since he was a teen, signed into law the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The landmark legislation gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration broad new authority to regulate the marketing of tobacco products. Under the law, the FDA has two years to issue specifics about the new graphic warnings tobacco products will be required to carry. Tobacco companies then have 18 months to get them onto packages.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20090828/hl_hsn/getreadyforgruesomecigarettewarnings

So it could be a good thing. I don't see it having any effect on long time addicted smokers.

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to the nurses when they put the suction machines on the patients with lung problems from smoking! That will never leave them and it will literally make one ill to hear this sound and the chocking and hacking that follows it!

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Here is something else that should help stop smoking:

Cost of Smoking Calculator

http://www.elcaminohospital.org/Patient_Services/Health_Library/Interactive_Tools_-_Calculators/itemId/6538/Cost-of-Smoking-Calculator/

There isn't anything good that can be said about smoking. It's bad for your health and the health of those around you. Now, on a positive note, do you know how much money you could save if you quit smoking today?

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And these references:



References
National Cancer Institute. Questions and answers about cigarette smoking and cancer. Accessed at NCI Fact Sheets http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Tobacco

National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Tobacco Information and Prevention Source (TIPS). Accessed on the World Wide Web at CDC http://www.cdc.gov/

"Give me a carton of low birth weigh."

that what got him to do it--combined with a scare over a growth in his mouth that had developed right where he parked his cigar, but turned out to be benign--was the realization that it would be a whole lot easier to quit while he was still healthy, rather than waiting until he had some smoking-related disease and had to quit.

It's a great point.

Why is America so intent upon poisoning it's own people? I guess so the Health Care Industry can make it's billions..:shrug: I bet the Health Care Industry fights this..

Look at the numbers of people who can't stop smoking even when half their lungs are already rotting away (although they can't see it) and they're hooked up to oxygen machines.

And some people might be disgusted for a while but become immune to the images after a while. It's always easy to imagine this sort of thing can only happen to someone else.


For me, it didn't even take an actual image the first time. I just imagined what my lungs looked like. That hiatus from smoking lasted about five years.

The second time it was a scary x-ray on Mr Pip that got us both to quit. That was 13 years ago.

Some people are going to be harder to scare than I was...

Public service messages using graphic images on tv or billboards etc are fine.

But forcing people who've already CHOSEN to smoke to see these images is over the top.

And FORCING the corporations to put the graphics on?

Nope. Not cricket.

I enjoyed every cigarette I ever smoked and am one of the lucky ones who just decided to stop one day. I knew the risks.

married. The other night she was visiting and when her car pulled up, she opened the car door and a cloud of smoke followed her out, with the two and three year olds in their car seats.

Needless to say, we had some very heated words. I can not BELIEVE that anyone would basically blow smoke into a baby's face trapped in a car with a smoker.

I have never been able to stand this woman and now I doubt I ever will. I told her that soon she could lose custody of her sons for doing this, and even if she didn't WHY would she want to?

The little boy has constant breathing problems - broncitis, ear infections, wheezing. I can't imagine WHY............................

"There's a guy- I don't know if you've heard about this guy, he's been on the news a lot lately. There's a guy- he's English, I don't think we should hold that against him, but apparently this is just his life's dream because he is going from country to country. He has a senate hearing in this country coming up in a couple of weeks. And this is what he wants to do. He wants to make the warnings on the packs bigger. Yeah! He wants the whole front of the pack to be the warning. Like the problem is we just haven't noticed yet. Right? Like he's going to get his way and all of the sudden smokers around the world are going to be going, "Yeah, Bill, I've got some cigarettes.. HOLY SHIT! These things are bad for you! Shit, I thought they were good for you! I thought they had Vitamin C in them and stuff!" You fucking dolt! Doesn't matter how big the warnings are. You could have cigarettes that were called the warnings. You could have cigarrets that come in a black pack, with a skull and a cross bone on the front, called tumors and smokers would be lined up around the block going, "I can't wait to get my hands on these fucking things! I bet you get a tumor as soon as you light up! Numm Numm Numm Numm Numm""

-- Denis Leary