AUSTRALIA: The Australian government is stepping up its war against cigarette smoking by using extreme shock tactics.
From next year cigarette packets here will carry graphic colour pictures of diseased lungs and cancerous lips.
Eighteen different images of the harm that smoking can do have been tested on focus groups. The government will decide which images will be used on cigarette packs later this month.
Mr Mukesh Haikerwal of the Australian Medical Association strongly supports the move. "There is a need for people to be aware of the severe damage they are doing to their bodies," he said.
Australia's junior Health Minister, Ms Trish Worth, said tobacco companies have been told that the changes will have to be made by July 1st next year. "The key group I am concerned about are those teenagers who, at 15 or 16, take it up because they think it's cool and glamorous, but regret it later," she said.
However, Australia's biggest cigarette manufacturer, British American Tobacco (BAT), said it was only informed about the changes two weeks ago and that the timetable was ambitious.
BAT's director of corporate affairs, Mr John Galligan, said that while the company was not against health-risk warnings, it was concerned about the size of the warnings. Under the new proposal the warnings would increase from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of the packaging. This would affect the intellectual property of its brands, Mr Galligan said.
"We would contend there is a universal understanding of the risks of smoking. Government surveys show there is a 98 per cent understanding," he said.
Mr Galligan said there was no evidence to show that such graphic warnings had led to decreased smoking rates when similarly used in Canada, which pioneered this shock method.
Cigarette packet health warnings with messages such as "smoking kills" were introduced in Australia in 1995.
Since June 2000 packaging in Canada has featured graphic images, such as a human brain after a stroke, mouth disease and diseased lungs.
Ms Worth said the new Australian warnings would be similar to those used in Canada.
All tobacco advertising was banned in Australia 10 years ago. Since then the smoking rate has dropped from 27 per cent to 20 per cent. In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities though, the average is nearly 54 per cent. Smoking kills more than 19,000 people a year, Action on Smoking and Health said.