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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/15GROS.html?tntemail0

Gross-Out Health Warnings

By KATE JACOBS

hat's the best way to get people to stop smoking? For years, groups like the American Cancer Society have tried to turn Americans against cigarettes by being clever. The Web site of one current campaign, TheTruth.com, is filled with jokes like the following: ''In a perfect world, there would be universal peace, everyone would have a monkey of their very own and tobacco companies wouldn't make products that kill 1,200 Americans a day.'' This humorous approach hasn't worked so well, however. This spring, for example, a study revealed that Philip Morris's ''Think. Don't Smoke.'' ads actually made kids more likely to pick up a cigarette. Now the U.S. government is considering a new approach -- bombarding Americans with a simpler, more aggressive message: smoking is really, really gross.

This year, inspired by a successful Canadian experiment, two congressmen introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would require tobacco manufacturers to display graphic warning labels on all cigarette packs. Under the similar Canadian law, which has been in place for almost two years, the entire top half of every pack must be covered with one of 16 government-approved pictures brandishing the horrors of smoking. Most of the images look like either pulp-novel book jackets (a choking man accompanied by the words ''CIGARETTES LEAVE YOU BREATHLESS'') or junior-high health textbooks (a close-up on a mouth full of rotted yellow teeth). Other images include a slack-jawed man hooked up to a respirator, a line graph showing the number of deaths from tobacco use and -- in the one example of the always popular smoking-causes-impotence argument -- a limp cigarette.

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The U.S. first picked up on the idea in October, after studies by Canadian antismoking groups showed that around 600,000 Canadians quit smoking last year and that 44 percent of those who did said the graphic warnings increased their motivation to do so. Our government is hoping that pictures of malfunctioning hearts and angry-looking children (''DON'T POISON US,'' that one reads) will have similar effects here.

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ALL INFORMATION, DATA, AND MATERIAL CONTAINED, PRESENTED, OR PROVIDED HERE IS FOR GENERAL INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS REFLECTING THE KNOWLEDGE OR OPINIONS OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE.  THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.