The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday unveiled nine graphic cigarette warning labels that highlight the dangers of smoking, in an effort to help prevent children from smoking, encourage adults who do to quit.
The warnings represent the most significant changes to cigarette labels in more than 25 years and will affect everything from packaging
to advertisements and are required to be placed on all cigarette packs, cartons and ads no later than September 2012.
"These labels are frank, honest and powerful depictions of the health risks of smoking and they will help encourage smokers to quit, and
prevent children from smoking," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a statement. "President Obama wants to make tobacco-related death and disease part of the nation's past, and not our future."
Tobacco use is the leading cause of premature and preventable death in the United States, responsible for 443,000 deaths each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and costs the economy nearly 200 billion U.S. dollars every year in medical costs and lost productivity.
These warnings, which were proposed in November 2010, were required under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act which was
passed with broad bipartisan support in Congress and signed into law by Obama on June 22, 2009.
The FDA selected nine images from the originally proposed 36 after reviewing the relevant scientific literature, analyzing the results from an 18,000 person study and considering more than 1, 700 comments from a variety of groups.
"The Tobacco Control Act requires FDA to provide current and potential smokers with clear and truthful information about the risks of smoking
-- these warnings do that," said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.