One
Stop New You Right Now
Large
labels said to scare smokers
Toronto
When it comes to changing
the behavior of smokers with warning labels on cigarette packages,
it seems the bigger and more graphically in-your-face the better.
A four-year study that
looked at differences in package warnings and their effects on smokers
in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States
found that Canada - with large warnings that include such photos
as a mouthful of teeth with gums blackened by oral cancer and diseased
lungs - leads the pack in getting the anti-tobacco message across
to smokers.
To conduct the study,
published today in the American Journal of Preventive medicine,
researchers surveyed 15,000 adult smokers four times between 2002
and 2005. They asked a number of questions related to warnings on
cigarette packages in participants four respective countries including
whether they noticed them and how often they read them.
We also asked if they
noticed cessation information on packages, whether it makes them
more likely think about quitting, said co-author David Hammond,
an assistant professor of health studies and gerontology at the
University of Waterloo. And what we find is that certainly when
we started, the Canadian warnings performed far better than all
of the others.
In December 2000, Canada
was the first country in the world to put photos on cigarettes to
go along with 16 different text messages in English and french,
such as Cigarettes Cause Lung Cancer and Cigarettes cause Strokes,
that take up half the package, both front and back.
Home
contact
us
|
