Pictures to scare smokers

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

Health Minister Annette King plans to explore the use of nasty pictures on cigarette packets to scare smokers.

Canada has introduced a range of explicit new warnings on cigarette and tobacco packets, including pictures of diseased mouths, brains or lungs caused by smoking.

Others highlight tobacco smoke's harmful chemicals, which include hydrogen cyanide, ammonia and formaldehyde.

The warnings occupy half of the front and back of cigarette packets and are complemented by about five paragraphs of more detailed information inside the pack.

The smokers' Quitline here has advertised on television using pictures of body parts, such as a brain, damaged by smoking.

Anti-smoking lobby group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) is keen for graphic Canadian-style warnings to be required on New Zealand cigarette packets.

Mrs King said she wanted to study the Canadian warnings and check what research they were based on. She plans to ask her Canadian counterpart, whom she is to meet this year, about them.

"Young people seeing revolting teeth or graphic pictures of lungs and hearts ...

"If it has an impact on them saying, 'Yuk, no, not for me,' then that is a strong message.

"It's better to stop them before they start," she said.

But a British American Tobacco New Zealand spokesman, John Galligan, said a concern expressed by the Canadian tobacco industry was that the "novelty value" of the new warnings might attract some young people to smoking.

His company expected to be consulted on any changes to the warnings here, he said.

There had been no demonstration of the effects of the beefed-up New Zealand warnings introduced last year.

A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Margaret Wilson's office said officials were still investigating possible joint legal action with Australian governments against tobacco companies.