The European Commission isn't blowing smoke. Anyone looking at a pack of cigarettes these days is likely to see "Smoking kills" plastered across its front. Turn over the pack and see smoking "causes impotence."
Next may come the pictures. The EU will decide next month whether to give its 15 member governments the option of plastering photos of decaying teeth or blackened lungs on their cigarette packs to supplement the new bold written warnings.
Smoking kills almost 5 million people worldwide each year, including 500,000 in the EU, said David Byrne, the executive commission's health chief.
Europeans are generally more tolerant of smoking than Americans. But the health warnings tend to be more in-your-face. American packs say, in discreet lettering on their side, such things as "Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health" or "Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide."
The new European warnings, mandatory from January and already showing up on packs, go straight for the jugular: "Smoking Kills," or "Smoking seriously harms you and others around you." The back has one of 14 slogans, which will be rotated, ranging from "Smokers die younger" to "Smoking causes fatal lung cancer."
Under a 2001 EU directive, space given to the warnings must be significantly enlarged, to take up 30 percent of the front and 40 percent of the back of each pack.
The EU is also encouraging member states to ban the use of terms such as "light" and "mild" from advertising, and will set maximums for cigarettes' chemical contents.
EU authorities say that if they decide next month to follow Canada's example and allow the use of photos, tobacco companies will be asked to provide the illustrations.
Byrne said research shows that health warnings on cigarette packages work, and "color illustrations get even more attention than messages with text only."
Tobacco giant Philip Morris International won't lobby against adding photos, "if they are there to inform people," said spokesman Marc Fritsch. But he said that the warnings were already unfairly large, and if the photos "are meant to humiliate smokers, we don't think it is appropriate."
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