New Warnings For Cigarettes

New Cigarette Warnings

                I read an article online about a new campaign that is supposed to get people to quit smoking.  Apparently the Surgeon General warnings on the sides of cigarette packs do not have enough detail to let people know how dangerous smoking really is.  The Food and Drug Administration has come up with a brand new idea.  They made a bunch of different designs as new warning labels for cigarettes.  For example, one of them is a baby dealing with second hand smoke.  Another one is a man smoking through a hole in his throat.  They want to make the warnings as graphic as possible so people will have a new understanding about the dangers to yourself and others that cigarettes cause.  They also mentioned that other countries have done this with their cigarettes and it has been successful for them.  Another intention of this campaign is not just trying to get current smokers to quit, but preventing kids from starting.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “About 21% of U.S. adults and nearly 20% of high school students smoke cigarettes” (Salahi ABC News, Para. 7).

                I think that this is a terrible idea.  It just seems like it would be a waste of money because there are far worse things in the world right now that we could be dealing with than smoking.  I also think that people tear the labels off their cigarette packs anyways, which means that they will only look at the warning one time.  I honestly doubt that this will deter people from starting to smoke.  Kids seem like they start smoking because of peer pressure or advertising which really has nothing to do with the actual pack of cigarettes that they are buying.  I think that kids who do smoke will look at the warnings as just another campaign to prevent smoking and will not let it influence them.  This is because there are already so many anti-smoking campaigns out there that people are used to the idea of them.  They seem to be more of an annoyance than a hindrance.