Unhealthy lungs, dead bodies, mothers blowing smoke in their children’s faces are one of the images the U.S. health officials want to implement in order to change tobacco warning labels.

The new graphic health warnings are targeted to portray dangerous effects of smoking, and they will be required on all cigarette packages and advertisements till October 2012.

The FDA will accept any comments and suggestions on its proposed warnings until January. Already in June the agency will choose nine graphic images from the 36 it has proposed.

More conspicuous warning on cigarette packages, containing larger text labels, was adopted in a June 2009 law thus putting the tobacco industry under control of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“This proposal gives the chance to face the most significant and important changes in public health warnings, because these new warnings are based on evidences on how to increase awareness and concern about the dangerous effects of smoking with a possibility that the majority of them will thing about quitting,” stated said Matt Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act demanded to apply new warning statements on the front and back sides of each package and also graphic images that will show dangerous health effects of smoking. The graphic warning should occupy 20% of every tobacco advertisement.

“For the first time these warnings will show that tobacco products are very addictive, and will present evidences that smoking can kill. We want to be sure that anyone who is smoking adequately understands the consequences of cigarette consumption,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg stated. Many investors don’t think that these warning will have a significant impact on sales of cigarettes.

“Similar attempts in other markets around the world practically didn’t produce any results. I suppose that it will have a small impact on selling and consumption,” stated Charles Norton, manager with GNI Capital Inc.

Altria Group Inc’s Philip Morris, Marlboro cigarettes producers, supported this bill, while others not so large producers as for example Reynolds American Inc’s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Lorillard Inc’s Lorillard Tobacco Co were against the it.

A representative of the R.J. Reynolds refused to comment before examining the 140-page proposal, but underlined that the company doubt about the legality of graphic warnings in a pending federal lawsuit in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. A Lorillard representative also refused to give any comment.

The Dow Jones tobacco index of such tobacco companies as Altria, Lorillard and Reynolds American was down 0.8 % in midday trading.

By Sara Norton, Staff Writer. Copyright © 2010 Cigarette-Store.org. All rights reserved.