Make the labels larger

When Betty Draper of Mad Men puffed on a cigarette while pregnant, modern audiences cringed. Public awareness of smoking’s toll on people’s lungs and on their children has come far since the 1960s.

New warning labels the Food and Drug Administration rolled out recently aim to make other potential health consequences better known with large, graphic depictions of what else long-term smokers should expect from their habit.

One of the new labels shows a man with a heart surgery scar running up his chest, warning that smoking clogs arteries and causes heart disease and strokes. Another depicts diseased feet with amputated toes, warning that smoking reduces blood flow to the limbs and can lead to amputations.

The labels would have to take up at least the top half of cigarette packages

and at least the top 20 percent of tobacco advertisements.

Extensive FDA consumer research found that the information on the proposed warning labels was new to smokers and nonsmokers alike. The experiences of other nations suggest that large and graphic warning labels help deter smoking and discourage tobacco users from smoking around others. The images on the FDA’s new labels would quickly convey to English and non-English speakers alike the real-world effects of their habit.

For the decade since it passed, the Tobacco Control Act has promised to be a game-changing policy tool in the fight against the nation’s leading cause of preventable death. Realizing that promise has encountered delays.

The sooner these new labels are on tobacco packages, the better.