Thai cigarette warnings, do they work?

I know this phenomenon is not exclusive to Thailand as I have seen it featured in a number of other countries. I just kind of wonder if they have any sort of impact on anyone.

I recall some stand up comedy from Dennis Leary, who was likely the world's most unapologetic smoker, that was kind of his shtick. I can't find the exact quote but it went something like this

I don't think there is a person on the planet that is unaware of the fact that smoking is just terrible for you. We likely all have someone in our lives that has suffered ill effects from smoking yet millions of people light up every minute of the day. All of these people are very well-aware of what they are potentially doing to themselves. I have smoked off and on for over 25 years and now I am just one of those guys that will have one or two when he is drinking. It's ok to be that guy in Thailand because ciggies are really inexpensive.

There's another winner but I have to say it is more than slightly misleading. The person who these teeth belong to did a awful lot of stuff other than just smoking to end up that way. My teeth look fine after 25 years of smokes and why do you think that is? Maybe because I brush my teeth every now and then?

Australia has a wonderful method of getting people to not smoke. They tax the ever-living crap out of them. When I was visiting there a few months back I didn't smoke because well, you can't really smoke anywhere and when I went to a minimart just out of interest I found that a pack of name-brand ciggies were over $30 a pack. I am very against this sort of social engineering because it primarily targets the lower-income folks. This is a special form of idiocy when you have someone that can barely pay their bills and still they are shelling out hundreds of dollars a week on a bad habit.

This one has excellent production value and is warning about the dangers of second hand smoke. When i do smoke in public, even when i was a full-time, 30-a-day type of dude, I was always very self-aware about not smoking around non-smokers. This isn't to protect their health it is called being a decent person.

I got a bit off topic there but the point is that I don't really think that these warnings have much a noticeable effect on the number of people that smoke and I believe that is because they go to such extremes in their warnings. Like the teeth thing. I know a lot of smokers - i don't know anyone whose teeth look even remotely like that. I know older smokers that have no problems "in the sack," There is another one where they show a guy's rotten foot and they claim this was from smoking..... really? Was it? I mean if they were more realistic in their claims rather than going for the one-in-a-million person who lost their foot I think it would be more effective.

Such as the statistics of you being 50% more likely as a smoker to be susceptible to all manor of disease. Perhaps show the difference between a healthy lung and a smoker's lung. How about how being smoker leads to other bad habits in life such as not exercising and becoming a giant fat ass (that is what happened to me - i got past it.)

I don't know why I started smoking. It probably had something to do with peer pressure because I admired someone else who was already a smoker. It is a dumb reason, but I can't really imagine why anyone would start otherwise.

There are some studies out there (from the U.K.) that indicated that the presense of the warning labels actually encourages people to smoke MORE. This surprised me. They said that the individual smoker actually appreciated the brands being so forthcoming about the harmful nature of the product and this encouraged brand loyalty and additional purchases. This is a ridiculous conclusion for any smoker to come to because certainly they realize that the brands were forced to do this by the government and if it was left up to the company there wouldn't be any warning at all.

I would contest that the gruesome warning labels likely never encourage someone to quit. Perhaps it encourages younger people to not smoke but I doubt that is the case either. For me, I think if someone wants to smoke they should be allowed to. I like freedom even if said freedom is causing harm to you. I do think that people should be very aware of where they can smoke and to keep their smoke away from others. However, i think that most people would probably do this anyway without being forced to do so.