Teens who Smoke don't Care What's on their Cigarette Pack

Scaring off smokers from tobacco products may prove a more difficult task than simply slapping on cancerous lungs to a box of cigarettes.

According to recent findings, investigators looked at data from a large survey involving more than a thousand British teenagers from the ages of 11 to 16-years-old that was completed in 2008 and followed up with in 2011.

The AFP notes that in 2008, cigarette packs sold in Britain had large text warnings labeled on both the front and back of the container. However, in 2011, anti-smoking graphic images were also added to the back of the packs, and 60 countries now require pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs as a preventative technique against tobacco use.

Yet the study showed that the images used to deter smokers didn't do much to stop their smoking habits.

According to the study, the participants (two-thirds of whom had never smoked) were asked to recall a text message or picture that was likely to discourage them from smoking.

The most commonly recalled message was found to be two types of general warnings on the packet front, including the following: "Smoking kills," which was remembered by 58 percent in 2008, and "Smoking seriously harms you and others around you," which 41 percent recalled.

The same rates fell even further in 2001 to 47 percent and then 25 percent, respectively.

Messages found on the back of cigarette packs were even harder to remember for participants, who recalled below 10 percent of the images during both time periods and less than 1 percent of the messages.

However, the researchers did find one exception, including three disturbing photos of diseased lungs, rotting teeth, and neck cancer that nearly 33 percent of participants remembered between 2008 and 2011. Yet even these results proved dismal overall for deterring smokers from smoking. 

The findings suggest that such warnings provide an insignificant preclusion for regular smokers who may purchase other cigarette products in the hopes of masking warning labels, and as for occasional or experimental smokers, the study shows that they were not swayed by the pictures or messages.

Though the United States had a plan to adopt similar labeling methods, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was shot down in March regarding their hopes for anti-smoking pics that could have been placed on cigarette packs.

It's estimated that each year in the United States alone, more than 440,000 deaths or nearly one of every five, are due to smoking. In fact, statistics show that more deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by HIV, illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides and murders combined. And an estimated 90 percent of all deaths from chronic obstructive lung disease are caused by smoking, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Knowing all that, why would anyone smoke? (Just a thought. Not that we're telling you what to do, anyway!)

More information regarding the study can be found via the British Medical Journal.