Death Brand

Would a gruesome picture of a cancer-ravaged mouth with rotting teeth make you think twice about buying a pack of cigarettes? Should it?

That's the goal of new federal regulations expected to go into effect within three years. The rules will require tobacco companies to cover at least half of the front and back of packages with graphic -- and possibly gruesome -- images illustrating the dangers of smoking. That's some bullshit.

If U.S. regulations are modeled after those already in place in Canada and other countries, the warnings will be shocking: blackened lungs, gangrenous feet, bleeding brains and people breathing through tracheotomies. Though hard to look at, the more graphic the image, the more effective in discouraging smoking, said a professor of medicine at the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control, Research and Education. Because there really is one.

"The graphic warnings really work...They substantially increase the likelihood someone will quit smoking. They substantially decrease the chances a kid will smoke. And they really screw up the ability of the tobacco industry to use the packaging as a marketing tool." Yeah, that's why people smoke - not the addictive ingredients but the enticing nature of the packaging.

Over the last decade, countries as varied as Canada, Australia, Chile, Brazil, Iran and Singapore, among others, have adopted graphic warnings on tobacco products. Some are downright disturbing: in Brazil, cigarette packages come with pictures of dead babies and a gangrened foot with blackened toes.

The authority to force packaging changes was granted in June, when President Obama, who has struggled with cigarette addiction since he was a teen, signed into law the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The landmark legislation gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration broad new authority to regulate the marketing of tobacco products. Under the law, the FDA has two years to issue specifics about the new graphic warnings tobacco products will be required to carry. Tobacco companies then have 18 months to get them onto packages. Will that hold up in court? We'll see...

Despite some research that has suggested images that are too stomach-turning may backfire because people eventually ignore them, new research is showing the most graphic images pack the most punch. In a yet-to-be published study, 541 adult smokers in the United States and Canada viewed a mild image of a smoker's mouth with yellowed teeth; a moderately graphic image of a diseased mouth; and a third photo of a grotesque, disfigured mouth. The most disturbing photo evoked the most fear, prompting more smokers to say they intended to quit. Duh. But lets see if they do...talk is cheap from addicts.

While the new regulations may also include no-nonsense, text warnings such as "Smoking Makes You Impotent" and "Smoking Kills," the images will have the broadest reach proponents say. Non-English speakers can understand the picture of a diseased mouth, as can people who are illiterate they add, and noted the smokers tend to have lower literacy levels. That a hilarious extra piece of data. Graphic warnings seem to be helping to drive down smoking rates. In Canada, about 13% of the population smokes daily, a 5% drop since the graphic warnings were adopted in 2000. About 21% of the U.S. population smokes daily, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It feels like a Bill Hicks routine ("Low birth weight...I think I found my brand), but I think the consequences are scary. Why not put pictures of mangled bodies on cars? Or morbidly obese people on food wrappers? Or deformed babies on a bottle of alcohol? Some things, like an Ed Hardy shirt, let you know exactly what the effect of using is - you turn into a douchebag. But that's the person's choice, and it shocks me to think that we're still having to battle against people's decisions. Anybody who doesn't know the effects of smoking in 2009 should get all the maladies they have coming. Water is wet and smoking is bad - we should all know this. But I think that forcing companies to do this is wrong, and if they start putting graphic images on a pack of smokes, the how slippery is the slope when it comes to food, entertainment, or other commodities? Who decides what is bad and what you should be dissuaded from?