Sophie Morris: You'll never shock a smoker

Will the anti-smoking hecklers never give up? They have already banned smoking in all public places (a move with significant merit) and now they're trying to sneak their browbeating way into the most private of places, our handbags.

As of yesterday, all cigarette packets carry gruesome images of the effects smoking can have on your health. Black lungs mottled with sticky tar, a throat resembling an open wound infested with a swarm of wriggling leeches, sperm too puffed out to swim for victory. Not the sort of holiday snaps I wish to glimpse as I'm searching through my purse for a lighter.

As anyone who smoked five years ago will remember, covering a third of each packet of cigarettes with the warning that smoking clogs the arteries and smokers die younger (than whom, exactly?) quickly morphed into nothing more than a fertile source of pub small talk. Is there any reason why adding these pictures to packets won't have the same effect? Or do people start smoking before they can even read, and need the dangers of smoking spelled out in a photograph?

According to the Department of Health, smoking is still Britain's biggest killer, netting 87,000 victims a year. The Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, hopes that the new strategy will maintain the quitting momentum propelled by last year's ban. The NHS says that 90,000 people called its smoking helpline after the written warnings were introduced in January 2003. But don't most smokers spend January trying to quit anyway, whether there are annoying warnings on packets or not?

In Brazil last summer, where the picture system is already up and running, people soon began collecting the different images, desensitised to the morbid illustrations by the end of their first packet. In Brazil these pictures include one of a dead foetus in a jar and another of a young girl using a mask as a breathing aid. There should be nothing at all funny to be found in ill health, but these images provoke gasps and sniggers in equal measure.

Humour is a tried and tested way to deflect fear, and most smokers are at least a little afraid of suffering the habit's side effects at some point in their futures. These arresting images will force gulps from all shoppers though, not just smokers. Everyone who sets foot inside an off licence or newsagent's, or approaches the tobacco counter in a supermarket, will see them, as will their children.

An associate of mine has a fairly bullish approach to the Government's attempts to coerce smokers into quitting. If smoking is really so bad for our health, she says, it should be outlawed altogether. She smokes herself, but can't see the logic in the draconian lengths the Government is willing to travel to dissuade people from committing a legal act.

Other fatal health threats hang over the British public – obesity, diabetes and alcohol-related illnesses, but I doubt you will find pictures of George Best adorning your bottles of pinot any time soon.

Are we going to see a public health official walking into Tesco with a loudspeaker, yelling: "Can the obese man in aisle 14 please step away from the custard creams. Your BMI is clearly well above the recommended 25!" Of course not, because that would be invasive and ineffective behaviour.

s.morris@independent.co.uk

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