The Food and Drug Administration has designed 36 graphic warning labels to be placed on cigarette packages.
Here are some examples of the FDA's designs:
From the New York Times:
Federal drug regulators on Wednesday unveiled 36 proposed warning labels for cigarette packages, including one showing a toe tag on a corpse and another in which a mother blows smoke on her baby.
Designed to cover half the surface area of a pack or carton of cigarettes, and a fifth of any advertisements for them, the labels are intended to spur smokers to quit by providing graphic reminders of tobacco’s dangers. The labels are required under a law passed last year that gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate, but not ban, tobacco products for the first time.
Public health officials hope that the new labels will re-energize the nation’s antismoking efforts, which have stalled in recent years. About 20.6 percent of the nation’s adults, or 46.6 million people, and about 19.5 percent of high school students, or 3.4 million teenagers, are smokers.
...Among the most arresting of the proposed labels is one in which a man exhales smoke through a hole in his neck. Some smokers who suffer cancer of the larynx must breathe through a tracheotomy instead of their nose or mouth. But the proposed labels are not as gruesome as some mandated in Europe, in which ghastly photos of blackened teeth and decaying mouths give a Halloween aspect to cigarette packs.
“Today marks an important milestone in protecting our children and the health of the American public,” Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said Wednesday.
The United States was the first country to require tobacco products to bear health warnings, and all cigarette packages now sold in the country have modest ones like “Surgeon General’s Warning: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate Pregnancy.”
But 39 other countries have gone well beyond such brief warnings and now require large, graphic depictions of smoking’s effects. With Wednesday’s announcement, the United States — whose first European settlements in the 17th century helped to create and feed a global tobacco addiction — edged a step closer to joining those nations’ efforts to reduce the centuries-old epidemic of tobacco-related deaths.
“This is the most important change in cigarette health warnings in the history of the United States,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Studies suggest that pictorial warnings are better at getting the attention of adolescents than ones that feature only text; make smokers more likely to skip the cigarette they had planned to smoke and more likely to quit; and make adolescents less likely to start smoking.
But health officials said there was some evidence that the most gruesome images, while memorable, are dismissed sooner by smokers.
I'm not a smoker. In my opinion, smoking is self-destructive. It's a waste of money. It's a death wish.
I've lost loved ones due to smoking. I'm in no way an advocate for the use of tobacco products.
But I do object to the government infringing on the rights of private industry and seizing control, in this case requiring that graphic warning images cover half the surface area of a pack or carton of cigarettes.
These warnings go far beyond informing consumers of the hazards of smoking cigarettes. The government is taking control of the product via its packaging.
I think the labels go too far.
Everyone knows the dangers of smoking and understands the risks. There is no lack of anti-smoking education. If one is too stupid to know the dangers, I don't know how that person is capable of learning to smoke.
I do think warning labels are appropriate on potentially dangerous products, but the government's new designs are a no-holds-barred assault on the tobacco industry.
Is this the beginning of more government intrusion in private industry? Will the FDA expand its power and design graphic warnings for other potentially harmful products, like FOOD?
Any food consumed in quantities that are extreme can cause serious health consequences.
Consuming too much clear, clean WATER can kill.
Virtually every product has risks. The need for graphic warnings are endless.
Should grills be required to have images similar to the 36 cigarette labels since one consumes carcinogens when eating grilled food?
Should makers of toothpicks be required to have a label that includes graphic pictures of the wooden spikes sticking out of people's eyes?
Should packages of candles for birthday cakes include graphic images of burn victims? HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Make a wish!
Should women's high heel shoes come in boxes with pictures of women with broken bones and deformed feet?
Should children's bikes be required to have stickers depicting dead children, killed in accidents?
Should entrances to playgrounds in parks have large graphic warning signs that show children injured while playing, some paralyzed, some dead?
Should EVERY bottle of wine and spirits have graphic pictures of diseased livers and dying people? Celebrate!
Should EVERY car have images of bloodied bodies on the dashboard and the bumpers?
If the government is to be consistent, yes. If the government's role is to determine the design of labels of private industries' products, then yes.
This new necessity for the government to design labels for EVERYTHING will be a massive undertaking.
A trip to the store will become a visit to a house of horrors.
While I support warning labels and an informed public, I think it's wrong for the government to be in the business of controlling the design of product packages.
What's especially troubling about the cigarette campaign is that it singles out one industry, at least for now.
If the government is truly concerned about public health, then the government must be consistent.
Without question, it must demand that abortion clinics plaster images of dismembered fetuses and the mutilated, murdered bodies of nearly full-term babies on its doors and walls.
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