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Is it possible to shock people with warnings to alter addictive behavior? Will the FDA’s proposed warning labels for cigarettes work to discourage folks from starting to smoke / encourage smokers to quit?

This tactic to discourage smoking for public health has been used in many other countries already, including Thailand, where I lived in a previous chapter of life. Many of the Thais I knew who smoked would ignore them, or tear the pictures from the pack and we’d pass them around. I remember the one of this mouthful of rotting teeth that we would cut a hole in and place over our own mouths, sticking our tongue through to mock the warnings. All in good fun.

The new FDA labels are somewhat more conservative than their Thai counterparts. These proposed designs feature intentionally simple, bold text highlighting the numerous negative side effects of smoking cigs combined with sentimentally damning imagery like a mouthful of rotten teeth, mommy blowing smoke up baby’s nostrils, dead bodies, suffering cancer victims and things that generally disturb normal people.

Most of these are stupid and seem irrelevant. Seriously, a crying baby? A dead guy? A guy clutching the right side of his chest to explain heart attack? (The last time I checked, my left side is the one beating.) A doctor looking at an x-ray? (Looks like a stock photo I would slap on a niche medical blog.)

If you’ve ever played the Caption Game, then maybe you’ll understand why some of these images are downright hilarious. With a pinch of imagination, you start to ignore the headlines and see these pictures out of the context the government has given to them. You imagine the subtle details of these people, and pretty soon one of two things happens: the message is either embedded into your mind at face value, or it completely loses its importance and/or its intended meaning.

Since I don’t indulge in “the smoking habit”, I can’t say if it would deter me or not, but if you’re a smoker (wanting to quit or not), will putting these labels on every pack encourage you to quit?

For youth, these seem like those “Explicit Lyrics” labels on music, or an “R” rating on a movie. (Thank you, U.S.A., for your assistance in picking out the best entertainment for my feeble young mind.) These warnings didn’t discourage me from doing anything, hell, as a 17 year old you just don’t really think ahead that far when you’re young, or that anything would affect you. The mantra goes something like this: “It’s not a party if you don’t shave a few weeks off your life.”

I couldn’t help myself but have a little fun last night, so I made a few of my own versions for the FDA’s proposed cigarette warning labels. For your reference, here are the originals.

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