Canada Hopes Photos Will Coax Smokers To Kick the Habit Graphic Images Put on Cigarette Packs
_____News From Canada_____
• Americas' Life Expectancy Rises, but Health Mixed (The Washington Post, Sep 23, 2002)
Tobacco
By Richard Pretorius
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, October 6, 2002; Page A30
WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- Before Tony Hayden smokes a cigarette, he takes two other hits -- one to his wallet, the other to his conscience. Rising federal and provincial taxes have helped push the price of cigarettes up nearly 40 percent here in the past year, to the equivalent of up to $7.50 a pack. Hayden, a plumber, said he can still afford his $50-to-$70-a-week habit, but the cost is cutting into his weekend spending money.
More troubling to him are what he calls the "sick but powerful" warning images that began to appear on cigarette packs in Canada 20 months ago. The 16 government-approved pictures, one of which must be on every pack, include a man in a hospital bed breathing through a ventilator, a close-up of yellowing, nicotine-stained teeth, two boys staring out from the written message "Don't Poison Us" and a pair of lungs blackened with cancer.
"They make you think, and sometimes I do a double take," Hayden said as he and a colleague, Adam Lavoie, took an afternoon smoking break last month.
The picture warnings -- the first of their kind, with Brazil since adopting them as well -- are part of the Canadian government's expanding campaign against smoking. It includes $320 million over a five-year period for education and prevention.
The pictures have also caught the attention of U.S. lawmakers. A bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives that would require similar pictures on the packaging of cigarettes sold in the United States. But a spokesman for Rep. James V. Hansen (R-Utah), one of the bill's sponsors, said the legislation probably is on the "deep back burner."
The Canadian government expects to spend years fighting legal challenges to the warning requirement. Last month, a Montreal court heard closing arguments in a lawsuit filed by tobacco companies claiming that the regulations, including the required warnings, infringe on their rights of free expression.
"We say the package is a vehicle of expression and insisting on putting these images on, which vilify the product," violates the industry's rights, said Simon V. Potter, lead counsel for the tobacco companies in the suit.
He said that Canada's tobacco industry is "quite happy" to include written health warnings on the packages, but that the pictures and the accompanying text take up too much space and are "unjustifiable."
Mark Taylor, immediate past president of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said the companies "are facing an uphill battle." "It took the tenacity of a number of public health groups and some very brave politicians who stood up to the tobacco industry to get this through," he said. The pictures "inform people of the true risks involved in smoking. They don't exaggerate the dangers."
Anti-smoking activists and health officials credit the picture warnings with helping to reduce smoking. An estimated 600,000 Canadians quit in 2001, leaving about 5.4 million smokers over age 15 in a country where 45,000 people die annually from smoking-related causes.
"Earlier studies have shown that the warnings have been effective," said Ken Kyle, director of public issues at the Canadian Cancer Society, which in March surveyed 2,014 Canadians and found that 76 percent support the graphic warnings, with 59 percent of smokers saying they were a good idea.
In a previous study by the society, 43 percent of smokers said the new warnings had made them more concerned about the health effects of smoking, while 44 percent said the warnings increased their motivation to quit.
Kyle pointed out that the warning labels are only one part of the country's campaign and that continuing to increase taxes on tobacco products will have as much impact as anything else. Lavoie, an apprentice plumber, said that if prices keep going up, he will consider quitting.
Lavoie said that after his initial shock, most of the warnings have not greatly affected him. Yet he and Hayden said they avoid buying packs that display the stained teeth, or a bent cigarette meant to link smoking and impotence. "Those are the worst," Hayden said, joking that if he did not smoke, he could afford to take summers off.
To nonsmoker Julie Snee, who works in the administrative offices of West Edmonton Mall, the world's largest indoor shopping complex, the warnings are good if they get people's attention, but she is a bit skeptical about their effect. "I have friends who smoke and they don't seem to be quitting," she said.
Health officials were prepared for changing attitudes as people got used to the new packages. "Of course, there is a wear-out factor, and we will change the pictures over time," said Murray Kaiserman, director of research for the tobacco control program of Health Canada, the federal government's health agency. "The labels are a source of information. They cannot be avoided."
Some smokers have tried to do just that, however, as a small industry selling decorative covers for the packs has been born since the pictures first appeared.
"If someone is spending money to avoid a message, then they are obviously aware the message is there, and it still has an effect," Taylor, the physician, said.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
They are idiots! The Canadians have found ways to cover up those horrible, nasty pictures.
And as for me: since I have rolled my own for over a year, I bought beautiful cigarette cases at Ebay. So I don't even have to "see" the Surgeon Generals warnings anymore. LOL!
No pictures.
We got 'em.
I would love to see the proof of that, smokers has simply gone into the underground economy, one guy calling talk radio said, cheap cigarettes are being sold everywhere, a little while back, a man said, you can buy a carton for $20 in the underground.