Putting Off Smokers with
Rotting Lung Pictures

The European Commission has started the hunt for images of rotting lungs and dying cancer patients to be printed on cigarette packets across the European Union.

Next month cigarettes sold in the EU must show even larger health warnings than now, and from mid-2004 member states will have the option of adding pictures to the packs showing the hazards of smoking, the EU's executive body said.

The European Commission announced a tender on Monday for organizations to come up with images and test their impact on different European audiences.

"Research and experience in countries which have introduced health warnings illustrated with color pictures have proven that they speak more than a thousand words," Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne said in a statement.

Brazil and Canada compel tobacco companies to print pictures of premature babies and brain hemorrhages on their products.

Commission health spokesman Thorsten Muench said Europe would follow their lead but there would also be a lighter touch.

"We will have rotten lungs and we will also have more humorous images. It's not just dead bodies lying around," he said at a news conference.

For each of the current 14 health warnings, there will be a choice of five or six pictures so that member states can choose the ones that best fit local tastes.

"There will be research into how every image works in every country," Muench said.

He accepted the images might not put off hard-core smokers but said he hoped they would stop people starting smoking.

Reference Source 89

For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".