Cigarette packets could carry graphic images

Grotesque images of gangrenous feet, rotting gums and teeth, and throat cancer on cigarette packets is an option the Government is considering in an effort to reduce smoking.

Associate Health Minister Damien O'Connor today launched a consultation document that proposes a series of warnings about the dangers of smoking, including the gruesome images on cigarette, cigar, cigarillos and loose tobacco packets.

"We signed up to the (World Health Organisation) framework on tobacco control and we locked ourselves into a process that lays out some good moves towards harm reduction and ultimately the reduction in smoking from tobacco," he said in Wellington today.

The size of the pictures - covering between 50 and 60 per cent of the packet - is debated in the consultation document and will now be discussed with the industry and the public.

Mr O'Connor said 60 per cent was in line with Australia, which had 30 per cent coverage on the front of the packet and 90 per cent on the back.

"The facts are overwhelming that smoking cigarettes kills people and we have a responsibility as a government to try and reduce that harm -- the deaths from cigarettes."

Earlier today British and American Tobacco (BAT) spokesman Carrick Graham said that during the past 15 years, there had been "constant changes" to restrictions and regulations.

"Putting graphic images on packs is not going to change things at all," he said. "They (the images) will just fade into the background."

Mr O'Connor agreed that the written warnings had not stopped people from smoking, so the Government had an obligation to provide better information.

He said: "The information and evidence is that young people in particular do look at these pictorial warnings. They take the messages on board and while they not immediately change their behaviour and stop smoking, over time we believe that they do take those messages on board."

Chief advisor for public health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said health warnings were only being considered for tobacco and not other harmful drugs like alcohol because tobacco was a "unique product".

"It's the only product where when you use it according to the instructions it damages your health -- any cigarette damages your health."

Mr O'Connor said final decisions on the warnings would probably be made by September, with regulations in place by the end of the year.

WHO obligations to increase the size of the warnings on tobacco packets have to be in place by February 2008.

Massey University researchers are backing the labelling plan, and said evidence suggested that pictorial warning labels on cigarette packets were more likely to reduce tobacco consumption than text-only warnings.

However, Wellington smokers who saw some of the warning pictures disagreed, with most saying their addiction was so developed, pictures were not going to make a difference.

"It's just going to make the packet more hideous ... I don't know if it really helps," Mike Balk said. "I feel addicted so it's the wrong way of dealing with it."

Joanne Craughwell, 39, said she did not think the pictures would have an effect on long-term smokers.

She said the campaign might put off teenagers who were thinking about starting to take up smoking. "Not for me, I've got the addiction."

Anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) director Becky Freeman said she was pleased warning pictures were likely to be introduced.

"I believe it is high time we counter the industry's lies with graphic truths," she said.

- NZPA