The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Tobacco Control Act) requires that cigarette packages and advertisements have larger and more visible graphic health warnings. These new required warnings would consist of nine new textual warning statements accompanied by color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.
The Tobacco Control Act requires FDA to issue final regulations requiring these color graphics by June 22, 2011. It also specifies that the requirement for the new health warnings on cigarette packages and advertisements will take effect 15 months after issuance of this final rule. Some of the proposed graphic Health Warnings include:
- WARNING: Tobacco smoke can harm your children.
- WARNING: Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease.
- WARNING: Cigarettes cause strokes and heart disease.
- WARNING: Smoking during pregnancy can harm your baby.
- WARNING: Smoking can kill you.
- WARNING: Quitting smoking now greatly reduces serious risks to your health.
The Tobacco Control Act requires that the nine graphic health warnings appear on the upper portion of the front and rear panels of each cigarette package and comprise at least the top 50 percent of these panels. It also requires that they appear in each cigarette advertisement, and occupy at least 20 percent of the advertisement. For advertisements with a surface area less than 12 square inches, the proposed rule provides a subset of proposed color graphics to accompany the nine textual warning statements. Download a copy of the new Cigarette Packaging images.
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