Is a Picture Worth 1,000 Fewer Puffs?
By Angel Abcede on Jun. 06, 2017PHILADELPHIA -- A new study concludes that pictures accompanying warning labels on cigarette packages are an effective addition to text warnings. Specifically, the images “reinforce, not distract from, the important [warning] messages,” said officials at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been battling with big tobacco companies over a federal mandate to place such photos on cigarette warning labels, with the FDA’s efforts essentially stymied.
The new research appears to bolster the importance of pictures. After evaluating 112 daily cigarette smokers, researchers found that smokers had relatively greater difficulty recalling the text on warning labels than they did recalling the image, and focused faster and longer on the image than the text.
“It is interesting that much of the tobacco industry’s argument against [graphic warning labels] is that they are mostly emotionally evocative, too graphic or not factually true. Our study demonstrates, with nonintrusive, objective measures, that smokers engage a great deal with the images, which likely suggests they do not find them too graphic or off-putting,” said Andrew Strasser, a research associate professor in psychiatry at the Philadelphia-based university. “Adopting pictorial warning labels on tobacco products would be an improvement in communicating risk compared to the text-only versions currently on domestic packaging.”
Here’s a timeline of how warning-label graphics evolved and some of the FDA’s suggested images …
FDA issues final warning-label rule
The 2009 Tobacco Control Act compelled the FDA to issue final rules on graphics for warning labels, requiring tobacco manufacturers to place warning labels that cover 50% of the surface of the front and rear of cigarette packages, as well as warning labels covering 20% of the area of cigarette advertisements, according to the Public Law Center, St. Paul, Minn. The act required that the warnings include color graphics, to be determined by the FDA, “depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.” The FDA released the final rule governing the new graphic warnings in June 2011, including a series of 27 images, and scheduled the regulation to take effect in September 2012.
Tobacco companies fight back
Legal battles through much of 2011 and 2012 resulted in the courts siding with major tobacco companies on the grounds that the FDA rule violated rights to free speech.
On August 16, 2011, five tobacco manufacturers (R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard, Commonwealth Brands, Liggett Group and Santa Fe Natural) filed suit against the FDA in Washington, D.C., challenging the FDA’s graphic-warning rule. The companies argued that the rule violated their First Amendment rights and that the warning requirements should have been put on hold until the case was fully resolved.
The district court granted the tobacco companies’ request to bar the rule from taking effect pending resolution of the case. Then in February 2012, the district court held that the graphic-warning rule violated the tobacco companies’ First Amendment rights. The FDA appealed this decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals. In August 2012, a divided court affirmed the district-court judgment striking down the FDA’s graphic-warning rule.
Feds pull back
In 2013, the Department of Justice announced it would not pursue the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, opting instead to revisit the graphics and its warning-label rule. The FDA has been reviewing the matter ever since, according to the agency.
Calls for pictures on warning labels reemerge
In the fall of 2016, eight groups representing pediatricians, cancer and heart specialists, and anti-tobacco activists, along with three Massachusetts pediatricians, filed suit against the FDA to revisit the issue of photography on warning labels.
In the same time period, at least one study came out in support of pictures on cigarette warning labels and advertising.