The Evidence On Tobacco Packaging & Smoking Rates

Tim Andrews points out the evidence that 'graphic' warnings on tobacco packs do not reduce rates of smoking: 

The Australian Government has just released details of the newest graphics it plans to put on cigarette packets, including "pictures of diseased body parts, sickly babies and dying people". These images will cover 75 per cent of each packet when new plain packaging legislation comes into effect next year.

It is obvious that these images are not about informing consumers, but rather an attempt to draw forth an emotional reaction:

As Barton Hinkle explains,

The old warnings—informing buyers that cigarettes cause cancer, and so forth—conveyed information. The new labels are designed to provoke a reaction in that lizard part of your brain thoughts never reach. A warning on a ladder that reads, "Caution: Improper use could lead to serious injury from falling" conveys information. A graphic photo of a compound tibia fracture conveys only sentiment.

It’s the kind of cheap trick you could play with just about anything. Take exercise. Sporting-equipment companies glamorize it just as cigarette companies glamorize smoking, with beautiful idols looking too cool for school as they engage in the activity. But you could de-glamorize exercise in a hurry by forcing people to view pictures of dislocated shoulders, torn ligaments, and genitals covered in raging cases of jock itch.

In fact, Chief Nanny Roxon has said specifically this: "I think it's pretty gross...I think if I was a smoker, it would certainly put me off.”

So, if we are to accept the argument that government has the right to mandate "gross" labels, the question is – do they work? Ms. Roxton’s justification is that because she thinks they are “gross” it would turn off smokers. But what is the evidence? What does the science say?

The answers might surprise you: there is no evidence that graphic warning labels have reduced smoking rates anywhere they have been tried:

In the UK, a new study from the National Centre for Social Research (London) and the Institute for Social Marketing, University of Sterling shows there has been NO effect of England's graphic warning labels on cigarette smoking

In Canada, Dr. Siegel, Professor of Community Health Science at Boston University, with  25 years in the field of tobacco control (and a history that includes 70 published papers, and being key testifier in the landmark Engle lawsuit again tobacco companies), looked at the numbers in Canada when graphic warnings were introduced and found that if anything Graphic warning labels in Canada increased smoking prevalence .

In the US, the FDA – which itself is promoting graphic warning labels – has concluded (in its Regulatory Impact Analysis) that the graphic warning labels will have “very little impact, and perhaps no impact at all, on cigarette smoking.”

The reason for this may be found in a new study published in the current issue of the Journal of Media Psychology which found that graphic cigarette health warning messages invoke a defensive response and therefore may not be effective. Essentially, researchers found that smokers shown graphic ads who are “grossed out” “tended to withdraw mental resources from processing the messages while simultaneously reducing the intensity of their emotional responses…that these types of images could possibly have a “boomerang effect,” meaning the defensive reactions could be so strong that they cause viewers to stop processing the messages in the PSAs." 

Here's Reason's take on it: 

 

I could go on listing further studies, but the evidence is clear: graphic warnings do not reduce smoking rates, and are simply yet another case of costly, ineffective big-government overregulation. Although, when we have such a deeply anti-science government, I suppose this really doesn't bother them much - which is what I find truly "gross".

Tim Andrews is the Managing Editor of Menzies House. 

Comments

[Dante]

1.

Tim, of course you could go on listing further studies" but it won't change these basic facts:

1. If plain packaging are ineffective then why are the tobacco companies so concerned? Would they really be so stupid to throw away millions of dollars to stop plain packaging laws from being introduced? I don't think so, they know that it works, or at least they fear that it will work!!

2. You have incorrectly assumed that the plain packaging is to dissuade smokers from smoking. It's like trying to convince you that socialist policies are good for you. Hard, dedicated and addicted smokers will continue to smoke, just as extreme right supports sees any socialist idea as evil. But it's the yet-to-be corrupted young that we want to prevent from taking up smoking. This group respond to emotional clues and peer pressure. This is the group plain packaging wants to help.

3. I'm amused that anyone could possibly be against plain packaging laws. It's a reform that, even taking your words for it, isn't going to increase smoking, so what's the problem? Is it opposing for opposing sake? Or is it that people on the Right are stuck on the terrible-2 syndrome of saying NO, NO, NO to everything just because they can't even stop for an instant to think that sometime the other side may have a good idea?

Your dismissive "Chief Nanny Roxon" is a clear indication that your side of politics has no respect for anyone and for any office. Grow up!

[Addicted]

2.

I'm a smoker and I just tune out the messages and photos on the packet. I just don't notice them anymore. As for plain packaging - I don't buy my cigarettes based on the attractiveness of the packet. I buy according to preferred taste. The only difference plain packaging is going to make is to the poor buggers who sell cigarettes and have to find the particular ones you ask for in a sea of olive green.

If the govt were serious about reducing smoking rates then they should subsidize smoking cessation drugs for longer than three months. I gave up easily on Champix but started again not long after my last pill. I would have paid full price for the drug if I had known I would start again after finishing but the govt says three months is enough so I believed them. Once I was back on the cigarettes again I couldn't face starting all over again with the initial side effects you get when you start taking Champix.

[Michael Sutcliffe]

3.

1. Because it a) stops cigarette companies participating in an open market as they can't differentiate and brand their products and engage their consumers as you normally would like any other producer of a legal product, and b) they've spent a lot of money on developing their IP and their brands which is being stolen from them.

2. Making a product more taboo and secretive makes it more attractive to younger smokers.

3. I can't believe you don't think young adults can make a rational choice about whether to smoke, or that a legal product shoudlnt' be marketed like any other product available to adults. That's why leftwing sucks like yourself are actually evil, immoral and hypocritical: you want to deny the valid choices of others and refuse to practice the tolerance that you preach.

[SignedIn]

4.

LoL
The funniest thing about this is that the old school cigarette advertising was designed to illicit an emotional reaction.
The successful businessman, the gorgeous housewife, the cool cowboy .. all smoking .. "I want to be like them!"
Hypocrisy abounds.

Tobacco companies used advertising to target new customers many years after knowing their products killed their consumers. I have no empathy whatsoever for these companies.

[TerjeP]

5.

Smoking is a risky activity that often leads to premature death. It should be regulated like rock climbing and pregnancy.

[Richo]

6.

From the articles I have read on the issue it looks like the government is set for another defeat in the high court.

[JASMINE PROUD LABOR SUPPORTER!!!!]

7.

Big tobacco scared of loosing more sales. It will work especially with children seeing these graphic images - and they are graphic sad and real. Other countries are watching closely these reforms and impacts of the changes and thinking of doing the same; no wonder Big Tobacco's fighting so hard. Well done Australia and the Labor Party for taking a positive step! God knows tax payers are forking a hell of a lot more paying for the Heath implications of smoking - lung cancer, heart disease emphysema, list goes on.... PS it's about time the Liberal and National Party stop dipping their hands in their Pockets. Tony Abbott bought to you by Winnie Blues.... Sporting stopped years ago it's time for politics and leaders to also.

[Michael Webb]

8.

Advertising, like the zombie induced Caoltion voting increases from radio shock jocks, DOES work.
That is why there is ALWAYS a hue and a big cry when anyone challenges or seeks to regulate advertisers or legislate to have warnings and plain packaging.

Drongoes listened to opinionated fellow drongoes during the Reformation who got up on soapboxes when the Ruling Prince allowed it; and before they were allowed into the open to spread their folkish will-filled opinions parading as fact, organised in secret places where they felt important and felt they were on a mission from God.

Times haven't changed with needy leader seeking people, sadly part of the new breed in Australia, on convoys and rallies like prairie folk.

[Michael Sutcliffe]

9.

God knows tax payers are forking a hell of a lot more paying for the Heath implications of smoking - lung cancer, heart disease emphysema, list goes on....

God might think he knows, but he'd be wrong. The additional medical expenses required by smokers costs the Australian government less than $1billion per year. Smokers pay over $5billion dollars per year in tobacco excise alone, before you add income tax and GST on the purchase of tobacco. And that's before you consider the fact that smokers die earlier and cost the welfare system less. Smokers contribute substantially more to the government coffers than they take out.