Starting next year, every pack of cigarettes will include a large warning label that will graphically display the dangers of smoking. The label will take up half the surface of each pack and will depict diseased lungs, a man with a tracheotomy hole in his neck, and a man with his chest cavity surgically stitched together. The pictures are definitely disturbing, but will they actually change the amount of people who choose to smoke?
There are about 46.6 million smokers in the United States. I doubt any of those people don’t already know that smoking is dangerous. Nobody is going to pick up one of these new packs and be shocked to find out that cigarettes can kill you, and then decide to quit.
Tobacco companies are obviously not happy about this new law. Five of the largest tobacco companies in the United States are suing the federal government over the new warning labels, stating that it infringes on their First Amendment rights. They think the labels are urging prospective buyers to not buy their product, instead of just warning them that they are dangerous.
The tobacco companies probably don’t have a very good chance of avoiding this law, but they don’t need to worry. Increasingly large and alarming warning labels have been popping up on cigarette packs for years, and they have done almost nothing to stop the smoking rate in this country. Cigarettes have simply been around too long and become too ingrained in our culture to be stopped. The only way to stop smoking completely would be to make cigarettes entirely illegal, which we know will never happen at this point.
The only truly effective way to lower the smoking rate in this country would be to heavily tax them. Some states already have incredibly high taxes on tobacco products. In New York, a pack of cigarettes costs anywhere from $10.50 to $15, the highest in the country. These taxes dramatically lower the amount of people smoking because they simply can’t afford it.
Stressed out college students and rebellious teenagers are the people the government should be worried about in regards to smoking, because they are the people who will get addicted later in life. If the government raised the price of cigarettes to unaffordable levels all over the country, those groups would be the most likely to stop smoking. A starving college student would not be able to spend the $3,000 per year that it costs to be a pack-a-day smoker in New York.
Telling kids that cigarettes are bad only works to a certain point. Most kids start smoking as an act of rebellion specifically because they were told not to.
Modern children have already seen the pictures of the diseased lungs and dying smokers, but they do it anyway because they feel young and invincible. Changing the labels on the packs isn’t going to change anything, but hitting people where it really hurts — their wallets — just might make a difference.
Matt Grippi is a senior journalism major and assistant opinions editor for the Summer 49er.
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