Warning: Secondhand Smoke is Hazardous to Your Heart
BY RPCI Health Behavior-Paul Hage
With an ban on deceptive Labels like "low tar" and "light",
cigarette companies resort to deceptive colored labels
WIVB Channel 4 Buffalo Report
The impact of cigarette pack design, descriptors, and warning labels on risk perception in the U.S.
Dr. Maansi Bansal-Travers from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, along with colleagues from the University of Waterloo and the State University of New York at Buffalo, recently completed a study that examined the impact of cigarette pack design, product descriptors, and health warnings on risk perception and brand appeal in the U.S. The findings support evidence that larger, graphic health warnings that convey loss-framed messages would be the most effective in communicating health risks to U.S. adults. The results also indicate that color and product descriptors used in cigarette package design are associated with false beliefs about risks.
ITC Project special report on
warning labels
As part of an ongoing international study currently in 19 countries around the world, the ITC Project has released a report focusing on tobacco warning labels, prepared for World No Tobacco Day. The ITC report on warning labels concludes from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of text and pictorial warnings across many ITC countries that graphic pictorial warnings are more effective than text-only warnings.
Dr. Michael Cummings, chair of the Department of Health Behavior at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, recently interviewed three experts in the field of health warning labeling on tobacco products: Dr. David Hammond from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada; Dr. Maansi Bansal-Travers from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY, and Dr. Ron Borland from the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. These researchers discuss the research that has been conducted in tobacco warning labels and the findings that show that large pictorial warning labels are the most cost-effective way for governments to educate smokers about the health risks from smoking and increase motivation to quit.
Specifically, graphic pictorial warnings: (a) are more noticeable and domonant than text warnings, (b) hightens awareness of about the harms of smoking, (c) motivates smokers to quit smoking.
The findings provide compelling evidence of the effectiveness of pictorial warnings and support the strong FCTC Article 11 Guidelines, adopted at the Third Conference of the Parties in November 2008, which call for pictorial warnings on at least 50% of the package.
Taste the Rainbow: Cigarette makers' colorful
answer to FDA packaging regs
Fast Company tapped two tobacco control experts: David Hammond, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, and Maansi Bansal-Travers, a research scientist with the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. They provided their take on the industry's reaction to the new regulations.
WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2008 -
The MPOWER package
This landmark new report presents the first comprehensive worldwide analysis of tobacco use and control efforts. It provides countries with a roadmap to reverse the devastating global tobacco epidemic that could kill up to one billion people by the end of this century.
The report outlines the MPOWER package, a set of six key tobacco control measures that reflect and build on the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Visit the WHO MPOWER website
The report focuses on six key policy areas to “reverse the tobacco epidemic” including:
“The six MPOWER strategies are:
- Monitor tobacco use and prevention policies
- Protect people from tobacco smoke
- Offer help to quit tobacco use
- Warn about the dangers of tobacco
- Enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship
- Raise taxes on tobacco”
More Tobacco Control Videos
Click to view various videos on tobacco control policies, including taxation policy, anti-smuggling measures, and graphic health warnings.