John Gardner: Risk takers don't buy packet shock tactics

When you pick up a packet of butter from the supermarket chiller it doesn't have a graphic picture of clogged arteries on the wrapping. The packet of peanuts lacks a photograph of a child collapsing in anaphylactic shock and there's no image of a ravaged liver on the wine label.

But smokers may soon have to confront a grisly reminder of the health risks they run. The measure will, say the anti-smoking groups, be an effective way of combating the tobacco habit. We might be forgiven a little scepticism.

It can be argued, and was unsuccessfully in the case of Janice Pou, that older smokers were not aware of the substantial health risks associated with smoking when they started. But it is impossible to believe that even the dimmest teenager is blissfully ignorant that inhaling great gulps of tar-laden smoke is a bad idea.

Yet look at the bus shelters in the morning and they are meteor showers, glittering with the lighters of the young puffers.

Opponents of the tobacco industry say health warnings have to battle against the weight of images that make smoking seem normal, even desirable. Watch many overseas films or TV and you may believe smoking a fag is the obligatory accompaniment to stress, grief, a successful operation, friendship and sex. Even given this counterwave of propaganda it is hard to deny smokers know the risks.

But young people are notorious risk takers. They can't help themselves. Research indicates they even lack the bit of brain wiring that handles risk evaluation. So we might question what effect the more graphic images will achieve.

I am not a smoker and find the habit pretty disgusting. I do not receive cash handouts from British American Tobacco and I am inclined to believe the industry has been vilely duplicitous and manipulative. There is not the tiniest crumb of doubt in my mind that smoking is a substantial contributor to a wide range of health problems.

The reason I am making this clear is the tendency on behalf of advocates to suggest that if anything they propose is challenged, you must be in favour of the opposition. The road-safety lobby are great exponents of this tactic. Try suggesting that massive indiscriminate anti-drink driving and speeding campaigns are not necessarily the most cost-effective approach and you get "Oh, don't you want to bring the road toll down? See this picture of a crushed car littered with bits of teenager?"

What I am suggesting, in the most humble and tentative way, is that what we are seeing with the gruesome-photo campaign is another example of the "we must be seen to be doing something" syndrome.

We can't blame the Government for this one. They are merely meeting their obligation as signatories to the World Health Organisation's convention on tobacco control which requires an increase in the size of warnings on the packets.

We can, however, blame the administration for the dog-chipping legislation, one of the clearer symptoms of the condition. Nobody, absolutely nobody, believes that this legislation will safeguard a single postie's ankle, let alone a child in the park. But they are doing something.

And the same applies to a barrage of "public good" advertising. Has one P-fuelled husband actually been deterred from giving his wife a bashing by the heart-rending pictures of cowering children? We can't imagine one drink has been refused because of those hangover radio ads. If what the women's refuges say is right, domestic violence could be increasing.

It might be better to put more money into supporting effective social work, but the rest of us wouldn't be aware of that. It might be better to increase the price of cigarettes, which is known to be effective, but that mightn't play too well with the voters, particularly Labour supporters.

Using the same shock tactic proposed for the cigarette packets, are the relentlessly graphic road-safety campaigns. There seems not to be a skerrick of evidence they changed the behaviour of the habitually reckless driver, but they were dramatic and attracted attention. The campaigns might miss their targets but they do the more politically valuable job of reaching the rest of us. How can we doubt the problems are being tackled when there they are on the telly?

The pictures on the cigarette packets will be rendered invisible by the mental shutters of older smokers whose addiction blinds them to reality, and will have no effect on teenagers missing the risk lobes.

But the rest of us will see them. Tough action is being taken.

At this point I thought to mention the cuddly Working for Families ads, but they are party political broadcasts rather than public-interest campaigns.

This is not to say advertising or campaigns are always wasted. They are clearly not, or we would be implying that all those ad agencies are guilty of taking money under false pretences. Britons were won over to car seatbelts after a "clunk, click" campaign. Its message was simple and associated with a then-famous broadcaster. It was not a propaganda exercise and had a measurable effect on behaviour.

According to Associate Health Minister Damien O'Connor the Government hopes the scary picture plan will shock up to 60,000 smokers into quitting.

I hope so, too, but I won't believe it until I can walk out of the cinema without fighting my way through acres of young people lighting up.

If it does work, of course, the dairy industry had better watch out.

* John Roughan returns next week.