Tobacco.org

Study Shows Smokers Averse To Gory Picture Warnings  

Pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs can help discourage more people from picking up the habit, a public health expert said on Tuesday, citing the results of a recently released study.

Rita Damayanti, a researcher from the University of Indonesia’s School of Public Health, said they found that smokers, when asked to pick from three different pictures depicting the dangers of smoking, tended not to pick the one showing the gory details of smoking’s effects.

“Such a picture on the package of cigarettes may help discourage smoking,” she said. “When we showed [respondents] some pictures, only 34 percent of smokers chose the awful picture of a person suffering from tobacco-related ailments such as cancer, while 41 percent of the nonsmokers chose it.”

The study showed the pictures to 1,239 respondents from Jakarta and Cirebon.

Jump to full article »