Personal Injury Law

Strong Stomach Needed For Latest Anti-Smoking Message

By Jane Akre

Don't look at these images unless you have a strong stomach.

In an effort to scare people into quitting smoking or not to start,  matchbooks in some areas of New York City are being distributed with grisly pictures, part of the "Eating You Alive" campaign.

Images of smoke-ravaged lungs, stained and decayed teeth, and large tumors appear alongside the words "Cigarettes Are Eating You Alive"- all intended to counter the glamorous image of smoking.

Short of putting the images on the cigarettes packs, which has been done in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile and Thailand, the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene decided to put them on matchbooks which are distributed at 132 cigarette retailers in the South Bronx, central and East Harlem and north and central Brooklyn, where smoking rates are still high.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, New York City Health Commissioner says in a statement that "Throat cancer, gum disease, blackened lungs - these are the realities of smoking.   

"Many countries put these images right on the cigarette pack, where they belong. While the U.S. hasn't done this yet - and New York City is pre-empted from requiring cigarette package labels - we are putting these images where New Yorkers buy cigarettes, just before they light up, in the hope they'll think twice about the decision to continue smoking."

Dr. Susan Karabin, a doctor in Manhattan believes scare tactics work.

She tells the New York Times "I applaud the health department for doing this. These images are accurate: Smoking interferes with healing, with the immune system, and if you have periodontal disease - a chronic, low-grade infection - it exacerbates it, and make the body less able to deal with that infection."

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, along with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, just donated $500 million to a global anti-smoking campaign. The World Health Organization estimates that money could save one billion lives this century.

Cigarette pack warnings began in the U.S. in 1966 after the first Surgeon General's report on smoking and its deleterious impact on health.  There are four current text-only messages that rotate, but they have not been updated in more than 20 years. 

Counter that with the $13 billion spent by the tobacco industry each year promoting smoking.

A report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month, found bronchial and lung cancers accounted for nearly half of an estimated 2.4 million tobacco-related cancers that were diagnosed in the United States between 1999 and 2004.

Tobacco use is one of the biggest causes of preventable and premature death in the U.S. claiming the lives of more than 440,000 people each year. About 90 percent of cigarette smokers become addicted before the age of 19, according to the CDC. # 

Full post as published by InjuryBoard on September 23, 2008 (boomark / email).