The US tries brand sabotage on cigarette packaging

The United States Food and Drug Administration just announced a controversial new anti-smoking strategy: graphic warning labels on packaging.

FDA issued a proposed rule, Required Warnings for Cigarette Packages and Advertisements, proposing to modify the required warnings that appear on cigarette packages and in cigarette advertisements.  These new required warnings would consist of nine new textual warning statements accompanied by color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.

Here are some proposed designs:

You can see the entire collection here.

The FDA is inviting public input on the new law from now until Tuesday, January 11, 2011. If you’re an American, you can comment by visiting www.regulations.gov, inserting docket number FDA-2010-N-0568 into the “search” box, and following the prompts. (User-friendly, aren’t they?)

But before you comment, why not see what another country has been doing with this strategy for the past 10 years? See more after the break.

Ironically, the CDC announcement comes at the same time as the Canadian government, which has been mandating grotesquely graphic cigarette warning labels for many years, is backing off from an earlier plan to increase the intensity of the program. This is despite demands from anti-smoking groups. a recommendation by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and academic research showing that these types of social marketing strategies loose effectiveness if they don’t constantly refresh their approach. Psychology Professor Geoffrey Fong of the University of Waterloo states: “Our research has shown very definitively that the actual effectiveness of the warning labels in Canada has gone down over the years, rather dramatically actually.”

For reference and comparison, here is the full series of Canadian warning labels that has run since 2000:

What do you think? Is the USA adopting a failed strategy, or is Canada giving up on a good thing?

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Comments

Further irony: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/11/10/edmonton-tarbox-cigarettes-fda.html

As you wrote, it is done before and it didn’t work. In Europe we had something similar. Which results in selling plastic boxes which can be wrapped around the cigarette packings.

I think the only policy which have results is higher taxes on tobacco.

This could be helpful in anyways. But if you think that this won’t work at least the government tried the they can do. Just a suggestion, if the government want to stop the people of using cigarette, why they don’t crush down all cigarette company? Anyways, great information and update you have about the government.
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