In Singapore, bloody images of damaged organs accompany warnings on cigarette packs. In India, 85% of the surface of a cigarette pack must contain pictorial and text warnings. In the United Kingdom, 40% of the packaging must be a large textual warning.
In contrast, the United States has one of the most lenient set of rules governing the labeling of cigarette packs with warnings. Often, these warnings are a single line of words, suggesting general consequences like “Smokeless tobacco is addictive.” The words are small and easily overlooked. But “where such words have failed, images might not,” said researchers at Ohio State University.
Four years ago, a US federal appeals court ruled that images on cigarette packets displaying the negative effects of smoking, which had been required by the Food and Drug Administration, were unconstitutional, based on the grounds that the images scare or intimidate consumers.
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Nevertheless, a study at Ohio State University, published in the journal PLOS One, suggests that graphic images prompt people to think more carefully about the risks of smoking. The study found that graphic warnings evoke more negative feelings in people towards smoking than do text warnings—essentially opposing the court’s ruling.
In fact, emotions help people make decisions, and the emotions stirred by the images help people consider risks more carefully.
During the four-week study, 244 adults who smoked between five to forty cigarettes a day were given cigarettes in packaging that either had warning text only, warning text plus a graphic, or warning text, graphics plus additional text detailing the risk of every cigarette smoked. The graphics in the study had been used by the Food and Drug Administration. They included images like a man with a hole in his throat from a surgical procedure to treat lung cancer caused by smoking.
The smokers then answered survey questions. Those smokers in the group provided with graphic warnings considered the risks more carefully: they read the information more closely, remembered the information better, felt worse about smoking, and were more likely to plan on quitting smoking.
The researchers say that even a small effect like graphics on labels can multiply into a large impact on the population, especially when smoking causes approximately half a million deaths a year in the United States. Although the court had ruled the Food and Drug Administration’s graphic label requirements unconstitutional, studies like the one recently conducted by Ohio State University researchers suggest that people should consider the effectiveness of graphics compared to text-only labels in helping consumers seriously consider the risks of smoking.
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