Cigarette packs will carry new graphic warnings of smoking risks

Among the other images smokers will see: a corpse in a morgue, rotting lungs and a body cut open during surgery. Graphic pictures of rotting teeth and throat cancer are to appear on cigarette packs to illustrate the health risks of smoking.

The photos will appear on the back of packs with a written health warning.

The images replace the previous warnings introduced in January 2003, although the messages “Smoking seriously harms you and others around you” and “Smoking kills” will continue to appear on the front of packs. The Department of Health said new figures showed written warnings had motivated more than 90,000 smokers to call the NHS Smoking Helpline.

But, smoking is still the biggest killer in England where it is the reason of the premature death of more than 87,000 people each year. The photos are considered to be more effective than text, and research suggested that warnings should be changed from time to time to maintain their effectiveness.

The smokers’ lobby group Forest criticized the new warnings as “gratuitously offensive” and “unnecessarily intrusive”. Forest director Simon Clark said: “We support measures that educate people about the health risks of smoking, but these pictures are designed not just to educate but to shock and coerce people to give up a legal product. They are unnecessarily intrusive, gratuitously offensive, and yet another example of smokers being singled out for special attention.”

Warnings on tobacco products from 30 November

All tobacco products will display approved pictorial warnings from 30 November 2008 issued by the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Awful images of sick lungs will appear on cigarette, bidi and gutkha packets, covering 40 per cent of the surface area of the tobacco packets, with the words: ‘Tobacco kills/Smoking kills’. The warnings were finally approved by a Group of Ministers (GoM). The tobacco industry has three months time to put up the pictorial warnings.

The realization of pictorial warnings on tobacco products in India was planned for February 2007. The GoM formed in 2007 by the Government of India had a task to review the pictorial warnings on tobacco products. This GoM did not accept the pictorial warnings (skull and bones) on these products, rather picked up weaker warnings. The GoM had approved two mild images of a scorpion signal depicting cancer or an x-ray plate of a man suffering from lung cancer.

Several nations have fulfilled strong health warning label requirements. Examples include:

• Canada, whose health minister recently proposed enlarging the labels from 30% of the package face to 60%.


• Singapore, South Africa and Poland also require strong warning labels.


• Thailand, which has added the message “SMOKING CAUSES IMPOTENCE” to its list of required warnings.


• Australia, which was the first nation to require that “how to quit” information be printed on every pack.

These pictorial warnings provide smokers with useful information on the health effects. The tobacco industry is continuing its decades-long strategy of trying to minimize the effectiveness of package warnings. Also package warnings on tobacco products are a good public health strategy because the cost of package warnings is paid for by tobacco companies, not government. These pictorial warnings will get enforced from November 30.