Newsy: Cigarette Warnings to Depict Cancer, Rotting Organs

The FDA is proposing requiring cigarette companies to incorporate graphic images on cigarette packs beginning in 2012.

The FDA is getting radical, at least that’s the burning argument on the street. WEAU reports there’s a new set of graphic images the FDA wants to put on cigarette packs. It hopes to discourage smokers from lighting up.

MARY RINZEL: “A man with a hole in his throat. A woman with cancer. A cemetary. A dead man. Some realistic, some cartoonish. Any one a possibility for future cigarette packaging.”

ALLISON MILLER: “It really helps to drive home an ugly, but realistic message that is how deadly smoking can be and how dangerous it is.”

...but how graphic is too graphic? Chicago’s WBBM spoke with a woman on the street who was fuming to give the FDA her piece of mind.

VINCE GERASOLE: “This is what they want to mandate.”

NANCY SAVAGE: “Oh, hell no.”

VINCE GERASOLE: “As you can see, they had some smokers fuming.”

NANCY SAVAGE: “This should not be on cigarettes.”

VINCE GERASOLE: “Why not?”

NANCY SAVAGE: “Because people have the right to smoke, and this is portraying it as you’re gonna get cancer automatically. That’s not true.”

...but Seer Press News disagrees -- laying out the stats for cigarette deaths: “Tobacco use and the many diseases it can cause are blamed for at least 443,000 deaths in the United States every year, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services.”

The Washington Post made the changes seem inevitable: “The FDA will gather public comment...and select nine [images]...after reviewing the scientific literature... Beginning Oct. 22, 2012, any cigarette makers that do not put the new warnings on their packaging will not be allowed to sell their brands in the United States.”

And of course, the ladies of The View blew their own smoke on the issue. One host hoped the labels would prevent teens from starting in the first place, but says they will likely have little effect on those already hooked: “It’s an addiction, and I think they should be spending money also on better ways of being able to stop. I mean, I know someone very close to me who was allergic to the patch. They’ve got to find better ways in the cigarette companies to spend the money on finding the ways to break the addiction.”

What do you think? Is the FDA on fire? Or is the idea even worth the lighter to burn it up?

Writer: Christine Slusser

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