How dare they put my dying dad on tobacco pack
A GRIEVING daughter claims a gruesome photo of her dying father was featured on a tobacco packet without his permission.
Jodi Charles, 42, was horrified when she saw the image on a friend’s pack of Amber Leaf tobacco.
The mother of two said she was ‘110 per cent’ sure the photo shows her father David Ross, who died in 2015 aged 66.
The picture, which depicts an unconscious man with a breathing tube in his mouth, appears beneath the warning, ‘Smoking causes strokes and disability’.
Although he was a smoker, the former ambulance driver died of unrelated bone marrow problems, septicaemia and lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. He spent ten months at Basildon University Hospital, Essex, after being admitted in 2014 and was on life support three times.
Miss Charles, from Purfleet, Essex, said that’s when someone must have taken the photo.
She said: ‘My friend who smokes tobacco came round on Tuesday and my 14- year- old daughter picked up the wrapper. She ran into the room and said, “Look, it’s Granddad!” When I saw that photo, I just said, “Oh my God.” I just knew without any doubt that it was Dad. I was horrified.’
The full-time mother added: ‘I cut my dad’s hair for 20 years, I know exactly how his hairline was, exactly where it sticks up a little.
‘The whole picture looks exactly like him. His eyes were puffed up when he was in intensive care and they are in the photo too.
‘I am 110 per cent sure it is him and that there is no way he gave permission for such a terrible picture to be used.’
She said the caption is ‘ absolutely disgusting’ because her father didn’t have a stroke and he wasn’t disabled.
The photo is one of 42 unsettling health warning images used on cigarettes and tobacco sold in the UK. They are required by EU law in a bid to cut smoking.
The European Commission, which produced the image, said the photo is not of Mr Ross.
A spokesman added: ‘All individuals depicted were informed and gave their consent. Any similarity with other individuals is purely coincidental.’ Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said photos of the sort shown on the packaging are not taken by its staff.
Nevertheless, Miss Charles remains convinced the photo is of her father. She said: ‘If it isn’t him, I want proof of that, and of the fact that he signed to say that they could do this.’