It’s somehow fitting that today, the official first day of summer in the northern hemisphere, America's Food and Drug Administration is releasing the strongest warnings against cigarette use in 25 years. Tobacco usage causes about 443,000 deaths in the US annually, according to the FDA.
Nine new cigarette package warning labels illustrate the effects of tobacco — in very graphic detail — including rotting and diseased teeth and gums; a man with a tracheotomy smoking; the corpse of a smoker; diseased lungs; and a mother holding her baby with smoke swirling around them.
Accompanied by phrases, "Smoking can kill you" and "Cigarettes cause cancer," every label includes a national quit smoking hotline number. The labels will occupy the top half of a pack of cigarettes starting Sept. 2012, and must equal 20% of all ad content.
The first mandated warning labels in the US, introduced in 1965, stated, "Cigarettes may be hazardous to your health," followed by the current small box with black and white text that was mandated in the mid-80’s. Mandates granting the federal government authority to regulate tobacco result from a law passed in 2009.
While the overall percentage of Americans who smoke has decreased since 1970, from about 40% to 20%, nearly 46 million adults in the US smoke cigarettes. The FDA estimates its new labeling will lower the number of smokers by 213,000 in 2013.
Just as in Australia, big tobacco is flghting back, with cigarette-makers including Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Reynolds American, parent company of America's second-largest cigarette maker, R.J. Reynolds; No. 3 cigarette maker, Greensboro, N.C.-based Lorillard; and other brands challenging the legality of the new labels in a pending federal lawsuit.
Their argument: the new warnings “would relegate the companies' brands to the bottom half of the cigarette packaging," making them "difficult, if not impossible, to see."
Follow along with the debate and discussion: the White House is hosting a press conference on the new cigarette packaging at 12:30 PM EST, while the FDA is holding a virtual press conference on Twitter today at 2:30 PM EST (more details at twitter.com/fdatobacco — the DFA's hashtag for questions and comments is #cigwarnings).
Update: here is a statement on the FDA tobacco warning labels from today's White House presser with Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sibelius.
Related reading:
• Tobacco Brands Under Fire
• Are Australia's Tobacco Shock Tactics Going Too Far?
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