Words of warning about cigarettes

One shows a mother blowing smoke into her child's face - "Tobacco smoke can harm your children," the warning says. Another one shows a man exhaling smoke through his neck - "Cigarettes are addictive," the picture warns.

There is no difference between cigarettes like Astra brand or Dunhill cigarettes as they all influence our health.

A few even show corpses - one of them dressed in his Sunday's best in a coffin and the other wearing a toe tag - with the strongest warning of all: "Smoking can kill you."
These new labels, which will cover half of a pack and a fifth of an advertisement, may not get the nearly 50 million Americans who smoke to change their habits, said University of Georgia advertising professor Dean Krugman. But they are a step in the right direction.
"I think these will be a marked improvement over what is currently in place," Krugman said. "I think the (Food and Drug Administration) made a wise choice."
The new Tobacco Control Act gives the FDA the power to regulate the warnings on cigarette cartons and advertisements starting in June. It will take another 15 months for the nine new health warnings to take effect.
Krugman has followed the development of the new warnings closely.
He started studying the effectiveness of cigarette warnings in the 1980s and worked with the American Cancer Society and the U.S. Department of Justice to see if they could be better.
Krugman found that the current black and white warning labels, which take up just 5 percent of tobacco ads, weren't very effective at all.
"What we found is that, with black and white warnings, people don't tend to look," he said.
"No matter what the warning says, it's not going to be effective."
The new warning labels are much different and in line with the same used in Canada and several European countries, Krugman said. The FDA settled on nine warnings with a mix of photo and animated graphics.
Gone are warnings like "Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide" or "Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy."
They are replaced by labels that read, "Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease," "Cigarettes cause cancer" and "Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers."
"What we've learned is that there is no room for subtlety," Krugman said. "You need to be direct because you don't have that much time and space."
The FDA still faces an uphill battle. Tobacco companies continue to spend billions of dollars every year on marketing campaigns, Krugman said.
Teenagers and young smokers may not heed the new warnings because they aren't thinking of consequences that can be decades ahead of them.
The new labels may not have an immediate effect, he said. But they will make a difference.
"It's not a matter of cause; it's a matter of influence," he said. "I believe this will be a huge step forward."