Source: www.denverpost.com
Author: Rhonda Hackett

How far would you go to stop a killer?
Smoking continues to kill more Americans every year than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death and the single greatest driver of health-care costs in Colorado.

Despite concerted efforts over recent years to educate people about the dangers of tobacco use, 46.6 million American adults smoke, while kids alone are responsible for roughly $2 billion in annual cigarette sales revenues.

More than 400,000 people die every year from tobacco use (4,300 in Colorado), while an additional 50,000 adults die as a result of second-hand smoke exposure. More than 8 million Americans currently suffer from tobacco- caused illnesses, resulting in an estimated $96 billion in public and private health care expenditures each year. In Colorado, the tab is about $1.3 billion per year.

Simply put, tobacco is the single most lethal and costly legal commodity available in America today.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has now followed the lead of other developed nations by requiring cigarette packages carry graphic warning labels. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said at a White House briefing, “We want kids to understand smoking is gross – not cool – and there’s really nothing pretty about having mouth cancer.”

Critics of the warning labels cite the fact that smoking is a legal activity and as such products associated with it should not be subject to government mandate discouraging use. The Institute of Medicine rebuts this stance, stating “Even though tobacco products are legally available to adults, the paramount public health aim is to reduce the number of people who use and become addicted to these products, through a focus on children and youths. The warnings must be designed to promote this objective.”

For years, the tobacco industry has argued smokers are adequately informed about the dangers of tobacco. Studies have clearly demonstrated, however, that nothing could be further from the truth. Regardless of the many public education campaign efforts and widely discussed reports on the dangers of tobacco, most smokers have limited knowledge about the health effects of their habit. Few realize it is directly related to heart disease, and fewer still know of its connection to strokes, impotence, respiratory illnesses and complications during pregnancy.
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Critics have also argued the warning labels don’t really work, citing mixed results of similar programs in other countries. Graphic warning labels have been instrumental in increasing the public’s knowledge about the harmful effects of smoking in more than 30 countries for the past 10 years. Geoff Fong, a global health researcher at the University of Waterloo in Canada, states graphic warning labels are directly linked to “more negative attitudes toward tobacco and cigarettes, greater knowledge about the harms of cigarettes depicted in those warnings, and an increased motivation to quit.”

Tobacco companies spend about $35 million per day advertising their products – $12.8 billion per year. They reap the rewards of untold profits, selling a consumer product that kills half its users. Requiring tobacco companies to boldly display attention-grabbing images of the undisputed effects of its use is no different than including appropriate warnings on any product.

Then again, maybe it is. While lawnmowers now carry a warning including images advising the operator that putting a hand into moving parts can result in injury, millions of people are not harmed by this activity every year. Moreover, taxpayers are not left on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars because of the ill effects of any other free-enterprise merchandise.
The graphic images will not stop smoking altogether. But other countries have learned they are an integral part of an effective anti-smoking campaign. America cannot afford not to follow suit.

Note:
1. Rhonda Hackett of Denver is a clinical psychologist.