Graphic Images Alert Smokers to their Disease Risk
World Health Organization consider that if cigarette packages will have graphic images of yellow teeth, blackened gums and bleeding brains then smokers will become more alerted that they will have such diseases if they will continue to smoke.
WHO, urged governments to make people more aware of the health results of smoking. It said that most countries still do not warn consumers of the risks on packages of cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco.
But more than 20 countries, for example Britain, Iran, Peru and Malaysia, already use visual warnings on their smoking products.
Some people don’t understand yet the need for such pictures, but the evidence is totally clear that they convince people to quit smoking.
The researcher, Douglas Bettcher, looked to a warning that read “smoking causes brain strokes” and showed blood oozing from a brain. Then he has called for such images to be printed on all tobacco product packets and on labels to water pipes that are popular in the Middle East.
Bettcher is sure that the disgust, fear, and worry from the warnings can discourage smoking easier.
The WHO ordered to all its staves to be non-smokers or to try to quit. WHO, it is a campaign which for more than two decades try to discourage smoking and fight against big companies such as Philip Morris International, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and British American Tobacco to attract new customers.
The Tobacco Industries opposed visual warnings, viewing them as a threat to profits, said researchers.
WHO added, that tobacco is the world’s leading preventable cause of death which kills more than 5 million people a year.
Statistics show that around 80 percent of smokers live in developing countries, where smoking rates have risen sharply in recent years alongside a ramping-up of tobacco marketing and production in poorer states.
In addition to package warnings, the WHO supports bans on tobacco marketing and sponsorship, prohibitions of smoking in public buildings, and high taxes on tobacco products.
