Cigarette Warnings Go Gruesome: Did the Health Police Go Too Far?

(FDA)

(CBS) The FDA has really stepped into it with its gruesome new tobacco warning labels.

Some are praising the agency for forcing smokers to confront head-on the health costs of their bad habit. But others - including scores of people who posted comments about CBS News' coverage of the labels - complain that the agency is playing health police.

SLIDESHOW: 33 New Terrifying Tobacco Warning Labels

They argue that smokers already know the dangers posed by smoking and won't be swayed by seeing graphic images of corpses and diseased lungs each time they buy a pack of cigarettes.

"Heavy hitting graphics and statements on posters, radio and TV commercials as well as on cigarette packages can go a long way to providing the 'jolt' needed to either steer someone away from starting to smoke, or to guide them to the realization of the need to quit, Dr. Jonathan Whiteson, medical director of the Cardiac and Pulmonary Wellness and Rehabilitation Program at NYU Langone Medical Center, said in a written statement. "Certainly, the new HHS anti-smoking strategy, like a wake-up call, can provide this momentum to help people quit.

Oh yeah?

"It appears that the FDA thinks that all smokers are ignorant fools," reads one comment posted on the CBS News website. "Unless smokers live in caves with no access to any type of media, smokers are well aware of the possible consequences of tobacco use. A larger, more graphic warning label on cigarette packages is only intended to embarrass and humiliate smokers, as if they are not discriminated against enough as it is... Smokers is a personal choice, and they need to back off and leave smokers alone!"

What do you think? Are the labels a good idea? Or just another opportunity to beat up on smokers?

SLIDESHOW: 33 New Terrifying Tobacco Warning Labels

33 Photos

33 New Terrifying Tobacco Warning Labels

[Story_Jon]

Nice post David. I saw these a few months ago in an airport in Mexico for the first time. I'm no fan of smoking and if something could be done to rid the world of them, I'd be all for it. But I'm just a little weary that this approach is enough, or if it's even fair. I mean, are people really not aware of the negative effects?

Why stop at cigarettes? Why not warn people about the adverse effects of alcohol? Or Keeping Up with the Kardashians? Or Ke$ha's music? We mocked up a few of those at our blog here: http://******/qAloJP

Let me know what you all think.

Jon Thomas
@Story_Jon

[mgeg1]

All these new laws, and even the way they are written about by news organizations like CBS News (excluding this article), have an air of superiority complex. Many people who don't smoke love to feel like they are better than people who do smoke. Some of this stems from class smoking trends, with the working class boasting a larger percent of smokers than the middle class and wealthy. People associate smoking "white trash" or poor minorities. Aside from the medical community, anti-smoking sentiment in America is as much about class as it is about health.

[keepmyrightsplease]

Bogus crap! Non smokers please read the real findings on second hand smoke. This has been inflated by social do gooders who have nothing better to do with their time than work on banning the little pleasures we have. They obviously need to justify their jobs by creating mass hysteria over ciggy smoking which has been around for thousands of years in one form or another. Please note the jobs and tax revenue that will be lost if ciggs are banned outright. Then they will come after you non smokers to get their tax dollars. So open your wallets. Also don't forget that if something like this continues to be shoved down our throat and they do succeed at removing the evil cigarette from the world they won't stop there. It will be certain foods, which by the way they are already working on, and then maybe clothing. After all who's eyes have not been assaulted at one time or another by someone's poor choice of clothing. BTW Hawaii is the most unfriendly when it comes to smoking. It has been banned everywhere which I find ridiculous so I won't be spending my tourism dollars there anymore. I also made some comments regarding this fact to alert smokers on a vacation website and guess what....they mysteriously disappeared. Interesting. Wake up America you are headed for total government control. Have you seen the latest movement to protect children from obesity? Pretty cool they removed the toy from the Happy Meal. No longer legal in California. That state has decided it causes children to over indulge by giving them a toy with their meal. Now when my girls were young and we went for the occasional treat at McDonalds they didn't want to eat the food. They wanted to play with the toy. Now parents are labeled as too dumb to know how to take care of their kids. So the city officials have stepped in to decide what is healthy and acceptable for your child. Too much. I think they should charge for the toy and give the Happy Meal away with purchase. Screw you California!~

[Arkajun1]

Those that choose to smoke are going to smoke no matter what they put on the label.

This new labeling is going to have the opposite effect...Now teens and tweens will brag and compete to see who has the grossest looking pack of smokes thus resulting in more younger smokers

Once again, the feds blow it.

[chapter7]

LOL. You got that right..

[rocketjl]

It is odd that smoking is not illegal, but these folks are allowed to do whatever their personal agenda is to get their point across. Don't see that in whiskey adds or medical ads where hospitals kill tens of thousands of people every year from incompetence. I feel sorry for the people (especially children) that will have to look at these FDA family pictures on the racks at Wal-Mart or Target or Kroger's. Itreally points out that these people are really sick and the country is getting out of control, letting them do this. This is Obama's time.

[Ladygbuk]

The photos can not be graphic enough to promote the severity of smoking. I saw lungs once from someone who smoked and it made me sit up and realize how bad smoking is.

[HDMAN47]

Alcohol kills more people and destroys more families than tobacco.
Yet their advertising continues to glamorize beer and hard liquor.

[mgeg1]

You might want to check those numbers. The last I had was about 400,000 deaths a year from tobacco and 90,000 a year from alcohol. Of course obesity has both tobacco and alcohol trumped. They should start putting pictures of nasty clogged arteries and people who lose limbs to diabetes on packages of Oreos.

[fufubaby]

Thank you! My father's alcoholism destroyed my childhood. My ex husband's alcoholism destroyed my children's childhoods. Not to mention drunk drivers and drunks who disturb the peace, get in fights, destroy themselves. Why do we see those scenarios in Superbowl beer ads?

I am now using an e-cigarette, and am smoke free after 38 years. But it's not because I saw pictures of diseased lungs. It's because I found something that worked for me. And though I am an ex smoker, I still get a case of red a** when holier than thous make smokers out to be stupid or evil. And mgeg1, you are right on the mark with obesity. My two-year-old granddaughter was served a child's plate of chicken tenders at Cheddars. There were four six-inch long battered pieces of chicken atop a plateful of fries. I could not have eaten the entire meal and consider it criminal that our kids are being fed this garbage. It's all maddening.

[j_mcdonald-2009]

Cigarettes kill more people every week than terrorists have killed in this century. They even killed more people on 9/11 than terrorists did that day.

Think about it. Almost no one in the country has a relative killed by terrorists (do you or anyone you know?), but almost everyone has a close relative, or several, killed by tobacco (about 6 or 7 and counting in my case).

When do we start sending tobacco execs to Gitmo for a bit of waterboarding?

If a few of them got the death penalty for premeditated murder, THEN we'd be getting somewhere.

[js1945]

hope your the first one to get puked on in thr grocery store

[mgeg1]

They don't force anyone to smoke. Educated adults make adult decisions about whether or not they want to smoke, eat McDonald's, or have unprotected sex. I'm sorry you have family members that became sick and died because of tobacco, but it was their choice to smoke. Nobody gets forced to smoke.

[kuching88]

Not nearly gruesome enough.

[pay88dirt]

Noble cause. But as an ex-smoker, pictures, no matter how frightening or upsetting, will not deter most smokers. That pleasurable experience of inhaling and exhaling the smoke is too hard to give up. It becomes a form of relaxation after dinner or when reading a book, and helps concentration when working. I went cold turkey 20 years ago and am happy I kicked the habit. If statistics show that the number of smokers isn't reduced, the FDA should discontinue the pictures.

[svs020550]

I agree!