Graphic warnings effective in scaring off smokers - CDC

MANILA, Philippines -  The Atlanta-based Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has corroborated previous studies showing that “graphic health warnings” on cigarette packages is an effective tool to scare off smokers.

Citing a survey conducted among 14 countries, including the Philippines, in 2008 to 2010, the CDC said the health warnings “prompt smokers to think about quitting.”

“Effective warning labels as a component of comprehensive tobacco control can help save lives by reducing tobacco use,” the CDC said in a report released in time for the “World No Tobacco Day” celebration tomorrow.

The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, covered 14 countries – Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, the Russian Federation, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and Vietnam.

“Tobacco kills more than five million people a year – more than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined – and will kill more than one billion people in this century unless urgent action is taken,” maintained CDC director Thomas Frieden.

Frieden added that “warning labels motivate smokers to quit and discourage nonsmokers from starting, are well accepted by the public, and can be effectively implemented at virtually no cost to governments.”

The survey showed that the vast majority of men that use manufactured cigarettes noticed package warning labels – more than 90 percent of men in all countries except India (78.4 percent) and Mexico (83.5 percent).

And among women, more than 90 percent in seven of the 14 countries reported noticing package warnings, and at least 75 percent in 12 of 14 countries reported noticing a package warning.

“Among those who noticed package warnings, data suggest there was substantial interest in quitting because of the warnings. Prominent, pictorial warnings are most effective in communicating the harms of smoking, and use of such warnings is strongly encouraged by CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO),” the report showed.

At the time the survey was being conducted, only five of the 14 countries had adopted pictorial warnings. But since that time, four more nations have passed legislation requiring the ill effects of smoking to be printed on cigarette packages.

Launched in February 2007, GATS is a nationally representative household survey of all non-institutionalized men and women ages 15 years old and older.

GATS is intended to enhance the capacity of countries to design, implement, and evaluate tobacco control and prevention programs and is being funded by the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use.