Ineffectiveness of health warning in cigarette smoking related diseases

Abstract

MEASURES TO control smoking have met with little success, except among doctors and others in the higher social classes. About 50 per cent of middle-aged males smoke cigarettes. The message that cigarette smoking may cause lung cancer is hard to get across, because 97·7 per cent of smokers do not get lung cancer, and the concept of relative risk is too scientific for the general population. Some of the present health warnings are judged inef fective. Although the probability of lung cancer among cigarette smokers is small (3 per 1,000 in males aged 45-64), the probability that a man had smoked given that a lung cancer death has occurred is very high (909 per 1,000 lung cancer deaths). The specific warning: "90 per cent of lung cancer, bronchitis and emphysema deaths occur among cigarette smokers", is likely to be a powerful deterrent in preventive programmes.