The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) long-standing bias against tobacco smokers has STALLED research into some REAL causes of lung cancer by decades.
In fact, about 40 years ago, they made a purely political decision to blame all lung diseases—and especially lung cancer—almost entirely on tobacco. And they abandoned all the important research into environmental and biological causes of lung disease.
The government also started requiring manufacturers to put bigger, more graphic warning labels on tobacco products.
Well, nearly a half-century later, scientists at the University of California San Diego have finally decided to see if those urgent warnings really do any good…
Do graphic cigarette warning labels improve behavior?
For this new study, researchers enlisted 357 smokers and divided them into three groups:
- The first group got cigarettes in packages that featured the graphic health warnings currently used by Australia.
- The second group got current, commercially available packages—with standard (non-graphic) warnings used in the U.S.
- The third group got special packages—without ANY warning labels.
Over the next three months, researchers asked participants through text messages to report on how they felt about their own smoking habits. Well, all three groups reported feeling increased health concerns.
But that concern may relate to the simple fact that they volunteered to take part in this particular study in the first place. In fact, heightened concerns about health among study participants is so common, there’s even a name for it: the healthy volunteer effect.
So, in my view, we can’t place a lot of importance on that finding. Instead, here’s what we should REALLY pay attention to…
It turns out, the warning labels did NOT make ANY of the smokers more likely to quit…or even cut back on their smoking!
So, after all the time, effort, and expense put into creating pervasive, ever-more-graphic labels…the warnings about smoking tobacco still “go up in smoke,” so to speak.
Yet, despite their own actual findings, one of the senior authors of the study still said, “graphic warning labels are an integral component of tobacco control strategies.”
Say what?
If the study shows that these labels don’t help smokers quit or re-think their behavior…then just how are they an “integral component” of prevention strategies?!
Sadly, as I’ve told you before, when it comes to smoking and lung cancer, the science makes no difference. The government will continue to force manufacturers to put these scary labels on their tobacco products until the end of time.
Of course, they should really focus their resources on picking up the trail of important research that began decades ago into all the REAL causes of lung cancer, instead. Because one-third of today’s lung cancer victims were never smokers. And another one-third were former smokers!
So, clearly, quitting smoking isn’t the one and only answer to preventing lung cancer…as the NCI bureaucrats decided 40 years ago.
In the end, if you’re a current or former smoker, I urge you to learn as much as you can about how to protect your lung health in my Breathe Better Lung Health Protocol.
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