The Food and Drug Administration issued a series of nine new warning labels Monday for cigarette packages clearly designed to illustrate their message that smoking causes cancer and other problems:
WARNING: Cigarettes cause cancer.
Smoking causes approximately 90 percent of all lung cancer deaths in men and 80 percent of all lung cancer deaths in women. Smoking also causes cancers of the bladder, cervix, esophagus, kidney, larynx, lung, mouth, throat, stomach, uterus, and acute myeloid leukemia. Nearly one-third of all cancer deaths are directly linked to smoking.
As CBS News/AP reports, this is the most sweeping change to cigarette packages in 25 years. The FDA is hopeful that “the labels will effectively convey the dangers of tobacco use, which kills about 443,000 deaths in the U.S. a year.” The labels are designed to cover half of the front and back of each package and will make up 20% of the advertisement for the brand. “Cigarette makers, who have until the fall of 2012 to comply, are doing what they can to block the labels, claiming in a lawsuit that the warnings would relegate the companies’ brands to the bottom half of the cigarette packaging, making them ‘difficult, if not impossible, to see,’” CBS news reports.
But if you think this image is graphic, check out the 27 cigarette warning labels nixed by the FDA.
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