By Quinn Bott, News Correspondent
Americans earn the right to vote, enlist in the military and buy cigarettes when they turn eighteen. A new regulation imposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) aims to make one of these options a bit less appealing.
The new regulation will require cigarette companies to include one of nine graphic color images that correspond with written text warnings on their packaging and advertisements. They also must include the national phone number for quitting smoking, 1-800-QUIT-NOW. According to the FDA website, the images are required to cover the top 50 percent of the packaging of tobacco products for sale in the United States by October 2012.
Images include a crying woman, or a scared-looking child surrounded by smoke. The more graphic photos depict a mouth with jagged, discolored teeth and ulcers on the lips, or an autopsied corpse with surgical staples in a line down the chest. In another, a man holding a lit cigarette is shown with smoke drifting out of a hole in his throat.
“These kinds of pictures are designed to elicit a negative emotional response, like fear or disgust,” said Karen Quigley, a psychologist and associate professor at Northeastern. “A person who associates that negative feeling with the product is less likely to interact with it.”
The FDA narrowed down 36 potential pictures to the final nine images after reviewing scientific literature, polling 18,000 people and receiving 1,700 public comments. A study reported on the FDA website shows those who viewed the images had strong emotional responses to them. It remains to be seen whether or not this will lead to smokers actually quitting.
“It might have an effect at first, but the more you see something, the less effect it will have,” said Kaitlyn Lloyd, an accounting major who graduated in May. “Eventually, people will just ignore them.”
According to the Center for Disease Control and Presentation (CDC), an estimated 46 million people, or 20.6 percent of all adults aged 18 years and older in the United States, smoke cigarettes. Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for approximately 443,000 deaths in the United States each year.
A Department of Health and Human Services press release details that the purpose of the regulations is to stop children and teens from smoking, and empower those who already smoke to quit. Some students who already smoke said they don’t think the images will help with these goals.
“People who smoke already know it’s bad for them,” said Andy LeClair, a cigarette smoker who graduated in May in computer science. “Hopefully it will deter young people from smoking, but the ‘cool factor’ can never be underestimated.”
Professor Richard Daynard, president of the Northeastern law school’s Public Health Advocacy Institute and chair of its Tobacco Products Liability Project, said in an interview with The News tobacco companies often defend themselves by saying consumers are already fully informed when they choose to smoke, and that this regulation will challenge that assertion. By showing pictorially the magnitude of risk they face when choosing to smoke, Daynard thinks that even young people who believe they can beat the odds or quit at anytime will be deterred from picking up another pack.
Although the new pictures may be grotesque to some, for others, such as Eric Voldstad, a senior economics major, the depiction of smoking’s dangers aren’t as big a concern as their price.
“Price is the only real deterrent,” Voldstad said. “I’ve cut down on my smoking a lot since coming back to Massachusetts [where cigarette taxes are much higher].”
Unless some triggering event happens to a person or their family, it’s difficult for a person to understand the dangers of smoking, said Karen Parkinson, an associate clinical professor in the School of Pharmacy and a pharmacist who counsels patients on tobacco cessation at Inman Pharmacy.
“Ultimately, if a patient doesn’t have some internal motivation, then they aren’t going to quit,” she said.
