November 15, 2012
Images on Cigarette Packs Are Scarier to Smokers Than Text Warnings
From Smithsonian:
More than 40 countries around the world force cigarette companies to print graphic images of things like decaying teeth, open-heart surgeries and cancer patients on their packs, in an effort to discourage smoking by directly linking cigarettes with their most gruesome effects. The United States, however, is not one of these countries: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration unveiled graphic designs in November 2010, but repeated lawsuits by the tobacco industry have delayed implementation of the new warnings. If and when the labels do hit, the images could go a long way towards continuing the decline in smoking rates across the country. That’s because, as new research demonstrates, seeing these images every time a person reaches for a pack is a more effective deterrent than a text-only warning. The research also indicates that the graphic warnings are especially powerful in discouraging low-health literacy populations from smoking—the one group in which smoking rates have remained stubbornly high over the past few decades.
The study, published yesterday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine [PDF], was conducted by James Thrasher of the University of South Carolina and colleagues. A control group of 207 smokers saw text-only warning labels, while 774 smokers evaluated nine different graphic labels, both images proposed by the FDA and a selection of others currently used in foreign countries. The smokers were asked to judge each label on a scale of one to ten for credibility, relevance and effectiveness. The results were unequivocal: The text-only warnings’ average ratings were mostly in the fives and sixes, while simpler text messages combined with striking graphics scored in the sevens and eights across the board.
More here.
Posted by Azra Raza at 05:51 AM | Permalink
Comments
The thing I always wonder about when I hear things like these is whether it's right to do that only for smoking or even at all.
On the one hand smoking is very damaging to people's health but on the other hand shouldn't it be their choice whether or not to smoke? Obviously it's important to educate people so they can make informed choices but with smoking it seems to be less about informing people as it is about scaring them to do what someone else thinks they should be doing.
Then cigarettes are not the only harmful thing available to people, although it may be more dangerous than other products. Some other products only have text warnings for things but would you really want graphic pictures everywhere were someone could be harmed? We should ask whether guns or boxes of ammo should have images of people who were accidentally shot. Should car dashboards have pictures of accidents scenes? Car accidents are a major problem in South Africa and the government has made videos of actual crashes available on-line to try make people think. What about the warnings of choking hazards of plastic bags or small parts of toys, should those have pictures too?
I think there are few people that would want those images on products but I also think that has less to do with the effects than the public perception of them. Smoking is seen as bad and dirty, and it is, but cars are seen as a positive and no one wants to be reminded of the very real consequences of speeding or drunken driving or simple carelessness because the people using the cars are us. The people smoking are those dirty, uninformed others.
Posted by: Jason Bosch | Nov 18, 2012 9:54:12 AM
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