Graphic images on cigarette packs can reduce death rate.

• Position: Smoking Cessation - Brief article

Using graphic pictures on cigarette packs warning against smoking could avert more than 652,000 deaths, up to 92,000 low birth weight infants, up to 145,000 preterm births, and about 1,000 cases of sudden infant deaths in the U.S. over the next 50 years, claim researchers from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Washington, D.C.

Their study, published in Tobacco Control, is the first to estimate the effects of pictorial warnings on cigarette packs on the health of both adults and infants in the U.S.

Although more than 70 nations have adopted or are considering adopting the World Health Organization's Framework Convention for Tobacco Control to use such front and back of the pack pictorial warnings--an example is a Brazilian photo of a father with a tracheotomy--they have not been implemented in...