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The UAE’s War on Smoking Continues With New Improved Anti-Smoking Graphics

Cigarette packs to go graphic

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/09/03/04/10291401.html

03/04/2009 11:54 AM | By Nina Muslim, Staff Reporter

Dubai: Starting September, tobacco products in the UAE will carry a message and a warning that will be hard to ignore.

Graphics of blackened lungs and a haemorrhage-impacted brain, among others, will provide stark warnings about the dangers on cigarette packs sold in the country, following in the footsteps of the UK, Canada and Brazil.

Dr Wedad Al Maidoor, head of the National Tobacco Control Committee, told Gulf News the World Health Organisation (WHO) donated the pictures to the UAE to help with its tobacco control efforts.

“We have received donation of pictures from the WHO. Six months from now, they will be on cigarette packs,” she said.

Health officials hope the graphic warning, with its inherent shock value, will help deliver the message better and discourage people to smoke.

Previous revamp of the health warning on cigarette packs in September 2007 only required manufacturers to enlarge the warning text and to make the warning available in English and Arabic.

The graphic warning is one of the many steps the UAE, a signatory of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), is taking to clamp down on smoking. A federal anti-smoking daft law is expected to be passed into law soon by the Cabinet and President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan after the Federal National Council (FNC) approved it last month.

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