In June of last year, the U.S. Congress passed a measure giving the Federal Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products. On Nov. 11, the FDA announced 36 graphic designs for cigarette warning labels including blackened lungs, mouth cancer and birth defects. As expected, big tobacco companies weren’t at all happy about this, while health officials remain optimistic. 

Tobacco companies doubt the effectiveness of these labels, while the FDA is still in the process of determining the results from a survey of 18,000 smokers. The World Health Organization has already published a study asserting that graphic warning labels are the most cost-effective method of spreading awareness among both smokers and non-smokers. 

Researchers discovered that compared to the text warning labels originally introduced as early as 2000, graphic labels used on cigarette products in Canada have shown to have significant effects on people, according to a study published a 2004 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Out of a pool of 616 smoking adults, one-fifth smoked less after using cigarette products displaying graphic warning labels. And while it’s no surprise that all the participants reported negative feelings after using these products, the higher negative emotion they reported, the more likely they were to quit. 

Every day, 4,000 kids try smoking and 1,000 adopt it as a regular habit. We try to educate them with warning labels.

“Warning: Smoking can cause a small and painful death.

Surgeon General’s Warning: Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy.”

However, in a society where many of the most popular video games involve killing other people, the concept of death becomes so common to kids, they have difficulty imagining what dying would be like in real life. Instead of staying dead, in video games, kids are used to “respawning.” And when you tell kids about the illnesses described in the cigarette warning listed, it’s hard for kids to relate. They think:

“Heart disease? It’s OK, I’m still young.”

“Emphysema? What’s that?”

“Complications to pregnancy? No thanks, I don’t plan on having kids right now.”

The part of the brain responsible for decision making and analyzing consequences isn’t fully developed until the age of 23 or 25. In spite of us lecturing our children about the long-term consequences of smoking, these concepts sometimes remain hard to grasp.

And while the tobacco companies are complaining, government regulations have been around for a long time. In this case, yes, the FDA will require these new labels to be displayed on their products, but it does not mean that the companies cannot include their own illustrations – the labels don’t censor their designs. Instead, they create an object that the companies must design around, either by changing how the package wrappercovers the box or what elements surround the warning label.

Once the new labels are approved and have taken effect, we can hope that fewer children will adopt smoking as a habit.