Australia Put Cigarettes in Standardized Packs with Graphic Labels - And They''re Working

Source from:  The Washington Post 11/13/2014

Australia's Parliament in 2011 became the first legislature in the world to mandate new plain, uniform packaging for cigarettes that included large graphic warning labels about the health risks of smoking.

The move was intended to reduce the appeal of smoking by making cigarette brands virtually indistinguishable from one another and to highlight the negative health effects.

The road from conception to implementation took about two years, delayed by legal hurdles and efforts to secure Parliament's stamp of approval. But toward the end of 2012, the new olive green packs with large, graphic images of the ravages of mouth cancer or gangrene hit the shelves.

Unsurprisingly, smokers hated them.

Support for the measure was a paltry 28 percent and it was more likely to come from people who expressed a strong desire to quit smoking.

But a new study of public opinion surrounding the policy change that was released this week in the journal Tobacco Control found a dramatic shift since the labels were introduced.

Now, 49 percent of smokers support the new packaging -- as gruesome as it is -- compared with about 35 percent who oppose them.

And more surprisingly, they were more likely to go from opposing the packaging to supporting it if they wanted to quit smoking before the packaging went into effect.

Those who oppose the packs were more likely to be heavy smokers and those who underestimated the potential risks of smoking. Support for the packs, on the other hand, was associated with quitting activity.

Other indicators that have emerged recently from Australia's experiment seem to confirm those general findings.

Unlike Australia, the United States was never able to overcome industry -- and smoker -- opposition to startling warning labels.

After the Food and Drug Administration proposed labels (like this one of a man in a coffin) for cigarette packages, a federal judge ruled the move was unconstitutional in 2012. The FDA then abandoned the effort in 2013.

It is unclear what can be done to overcome the constitutional objections to the labels. But evidence that they reduce smoking, increase cessation efforts and reduce cigarette sales probably won't help get the tobacco industry on board. Enditem