Scary images, scary cigarettes

I’ve been smoking for a long time, therefore I really appreciate foreign cigarette packs which my son usually gives me whenever he returns to Vietnam to pay us a visit.

Last July, my son gave me a cigarette pack he had bought in Taiwan. However, I had to deprive myself from enjoying those Taiwanese cigarettes due to the scary images on its packaging, which featured on one side a woman carrying her child in her right arm while her left arm covered her mouth; the cancerous heart of a smoker was shown on the other side.

My son told me that these images were the least scary ones. It is no wonder that on his trips to Hong Kong and Thailand the scary images printed on packets of cigarette caused him not to buy cigarettes as a present for me.

Yet he bought foreign cigarette manufactured in Vietnam for his friends upon his departure. He reasoned that on these cigarette packs there are only recommendations against smoking printed in Vietnamese, and in a very small size at that, so hardly anybody takes notice of them.

It is obvious that smokers do not use only their mouth to smoke, but also their eyes. Consequently, in many countries around the world, such “impressive” packets of cigarettes seem to be very efficient in demonstrating the damaging effect of smoking, as well as reducing the number of smokers.

Whereas in Vietnam, the recommendations on cigarette packs are no longer effective. Shouldn’t they be replaced by scary images in order to reduce the number of smokers?

At present, tobacco companies in 43 countries are forced to print graphic warning images about the damaging effects of cigarettes on their products. This is considered to be an efficient solution aimed at reducing the number of smokers.

A survey carried out by the World Health Organization showed that the majority of smokers pay attention to these images, and more than 25% of them consider stopping smoking. In another study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US found that about 25 to 50% of smokers said these images are capable of making them stop smoking.