Cigarette packets to show diseased lungs

SMOKERS will be treated to graphic images of the damage their habit is causing to themselves and others in the New Year.

The 42 gruesome pictures to appear on cigarette packs is the latest in a series of measures to reduce smoking in the EU. The habit kills more than half a million people and costs health services about €100 billion a year.

Ireland will be among the first countries to use the new images.

The photographs include rotting lungs, a young man in a mortuary, a throat tumour and an empty buggy. They were unveiled by Consumer and Health Commissioner David Byrne in Brussels yesterday.

“People need to be shocked out of their complacency about tobacco. I make no apology for some of the pictures we are using. The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror, not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray,” he said.

The photographs were tested on focus groups across the EU before being selected. Some show diseased body parts while others are not quite so graphic, such as a drooping half-smoked cigarette warning that smoking can lead to impotence.

The idea of photographs was first tried out in Canada where they were successful in convincing people to give up smoking.

A year after their introduction, a study by the Canadian Cancer Society found they were a motivator for more than a third of smokers trying to give up.

The study also found 43% of smokers were more concerned about the health effects of smoking because of the warnings and, on one or more occasions, almost a quarter of smokers tempted to have a cigarette decided not to because of the warnings. Mr Byrne also announced a €70m media campaign to persuade smokers to quit.

The former Irish Attorney General is in his last 10 days in his job as commissioner. He will move to the World Health Organisation as their special envoy on the revision of the International Health Regulations.