Review Article
Year: 2017 | Month: January | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 264-270
Health Warning Labels on Tobacco Products: A Review
Bhavna Sabbarwal1, Manjunath P Puranik2, Sowmya KR3
1Post Graduate student, 2Professor and Head of the Department, 3Assistant professor,
Department of Public Health Dentistry, Government Dental College and Research Institute
Corresponding Author: Bhavna Sabbarwal
ABSTRACT
Tobacco is the most common cause of preventable death in the world. Majority of people are unaware of, misunderstand or underestimate the health risks due to tobacco and tobacco smoke. Health warnings were first introduced on cigarette packages in the USA in 1965. Ten years later in 1975, the Government of India passed similar legislation. In 2003 WHO framework convention on tobacco control (FCTC) provides guidelines for effective packaging and labeling of tobacco product. Since then there has been a transition from text only to pictorial and graphic form of health warnings with plain packaging emerging as a new trend. Studies have favored pictorial health warning labels over text messages. Messages on these packs would generate exposure far outweighing than from other ant tobacco communications. Tobacco product packaging is a key part of marketing efforts to make tobacco use appealing and how the same packaging can be used to communicate the health risks to consumers is the challenge faced by the regulators. Studies have favoured the inclusion of health warning labels especially pictorial health warning labels over text and graphic images over pictures to increase the impact of health warning labels irrespective of age, gender, race, education and socioeconomic status. More research in the area is recommended to counter the opposition of tobacco industry against health warning labels and to make them more effective.
Key words: graphic warnings, health warning labels, packaging and labeling, pictorial health warnings, smoking, tobacco.