Smoke and mirrors

Gentlemen,its called education. It doesnt come off the side of a cigarette carton, said Nick Naylor,the maddeningly adept tobacco lobbyist in the Hollywood satire Thank You for Smoking. However,governments all over the world have ignored that logic,in their effort to stigmatise smoking. In 2008,160 nations pledged to institute pictorial warnings after a WHO convention. They now have punishing strictures that lay down how much of the cartons surface should be covered with the warning,that forbids any deceptive word that suggests that the habit is light,mild or low-tar. From the straight-shooting cigarettes cause lung cancer,the warnings have become more dire and descriptive,like smoking causes a slow and painful death,with accompanying pictures of rotting teeth and diseased lungs. In the UK,this has also inspired a range of subversive counter-warnings like You could get hit by a bus tomorrow and Smoking is cool.

In May last year,the Indian government announced that all cigarette cartons would come with pictorial warnings. And now,the health ministry has decided to sharpen the campaign,replacing the current image of a scorpion with a more direct and forceful one an oral cancer afflicted mouth. What did the scorpion mean anyway? Or was it a crab,an ideogram for cancer? Who knows? The issue is understandably incendiary,and two major manufacturers stopped work in protest,causing big revenue losses. They questioned the need for these messages and the lack of clarity in the kind of images to be emblazoned across the pack. Some cite studies questioning the extent to which these warnings deter hardened smokers. For instance,in Canada,its claimed that the percentage of smokers actually rose a bit in the decade after a ban on ads. And indeed,those who fixate on images tend to forget that,after a point,its the actual nicotine addiction that is enslaving,not the mental seduction of cigarette adverts.

However,there is no question that pictorial warnings can put off the undecided casual smokers,and thats achievement enough. What the tobacco manufacturers call ambiguity the fact that they have to rotate the warnings periodically is actually necessary to maintain shock value. Its important to mix up and vary the messages,before their impact is blunted through repeated exposure.