Cigarette (Creative Commons)

Smokers will be saluted with warnings such as “Smoking can kill you,” which illustrates an open casket.  Another shows rotting teeth and others depict a man smoking out of a hole in his throat, reading “Cigarettes are addictive.”

If the project is approved, tobacco companies would have to show the warnings on both sides of cigarette cartons starting in October 2012.

Accoding to the Washing Post, other countries have begun requiring more hard-hitting smoking warnings, such as Canada, Chile, Brazil, Australia and Singapore.  Canada was the first to require graphic images to account for a certain percentage of each package. 

In the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, a law signed by President Barack Obama in June of last year, the FDA is required to issue final rules necessitating these color images by June of 2011 and after an assessment of “the relevant scientific literature, public comments, and results from an 28,000-person study.” 

Tobacco use is presently the principal cause of premature and avertable death in the United States, according to the HHS.   It is responsible for 443,000 yearly deaths, with 1,200 existing and previous smokers dying prematurely daily from tobacco-related diseases and illnesses.

“Some very explicit, almost gruesome pictures may be necessary,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg in a statement to The Associated Press.

The final policy barring companies from making cigarettes without new, more forceful health warnings, covering at least 50 percent of the package, on their cartons for sale or distribution in the U.S. will commence September of 2012.

You can check out the new graphic images for yourself on the FDA’s website.

Reach reporter Eleanor Walper click here.