Gruesome warnings doing their job
Source: www.stuff.co.nz Author: staff Even in today's world with its plethora of information-gathering techniques there is probably no way to say for certain how much influence the use of revolting pictures on cigarette packets is having on the smoking rate, The Nelson Mail said in an editorial on Thursday. One thing is fairly certain, though - the images of gangrenous toes, diseased lungs and other rotting body parts are unlikely to bring about an increase. They have surely made some contribution to the latest statistics, which show a marked drop in the smoking rate, down from 25 percent of New Zealanders two years ago to around 20 percent, or 170,000 fewer smokers. The Health Ministry is right to attribute some of that improvement to the pictures, which at a stroke removed any semblance of sophistication from tobacco packaging, an area manufacturers used to put some effort into. It is doubtful that they can identify much revenue potential in that any more. The point has been further emphasised by a series of discomforting television commercials bravely fronted by mouth cancer sufferer Adrian Pilkington. He too shows the true nature of tobacco addiction in a way that forces smokers to confront the dangers of their habit. These two measures, along with the requirement for the Quitline number to be on every cigarette packet, are undoubtedly having an effect, hard as it is to define. There have after all been a number of restrictions introduced that have made it more difficult to pursue [...]