Labels Sought to Warn Smokers of Addiction : Bradley Plan Would Require Notice on Cigarette Packages to Reflect Findings by Surgeon General

Hoping to deter children and others from smoking, a leading Senate critic of the tobacco industry unveiled a bill Thursday that would require manufacturers to place new labels on cigarette packages warning that smoking is addictive.

The proposed label, which reflects recent findings by U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, would read: “Warning: Smoking is addictive. Once you start you may not be able to stop.” Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N. J.), who introduced the legislation, said he would offer it as an amendment to omnibus drug legislation that the Senate soon will consider. The House now is debating its own version of the bill.

“This new label would make people even more aware that smoking can kill you,” Bradley said. “In particular, it might deter large numbers of young people from taking up the practice. Most addicts started using this drug when they were young children.”

Calls for Study

Bradley’s bill would expand federal alcohol and drug abuse education programs to include tobacco use. It would also require the secretary of the Treasury to conduct a study of the public and private health care costs of smoking in the United States.

The tobacco industry vowed to oppose Bradley’s proposal, calling it misguided public policy. The notion that the 50 million Americans who smoke are addicts “is highly insulting,” according to Brennan Moran, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, a trade association.

Koop, who appeared with Bradley at a Capitol Hill press conference, did not formally endorse the legislation. But he said it reflected the spirit of his report, issued last year, which determined that nicotine use is addictive and that the physiological processes creating nicotine addiction are similar to those for heroin and cocaine addiction.

More than 300,000 Americans die each year from tobacco-related addiction, according to the report. In the preface, Koop concluded that “a health warning on addiction should be rotated with the other warnings now required on cigarette and smokeless tobacco packages and advertisements.”

Currently, federal law requires cigarette manufacturers to place labels on cigarette packages and messages in advertisements warning users about possible health complications. A new label addressing the addiction problem “would be something else entirely, it would give us one more educational weapon,” Koop said.

Warning for Children

“It’s a different thing when you tell someone that they are in a state of addiction,” he noted. “It would be an especially strong warning for children, because we know that more than half of those people who smoke began before they turned 14.”

Koop conceded that it is difficult to determine how much of a role warning labels have played in causing an estimated 40 million Americans to stop smoking. But he said that the labels, as part of a nationwide education campaign, “certainly have had something to do with this.”

Moran disagreed, saying that Americans who have quit smoking did so on their own.

“This proposal flies in the face of common sense,” she said. “It’s an insult to the 40 million Americans who have quit smoking cold turkey. These people are not addicts.”

Bradley conceded that his amendment will face tough opposition but said that, if Congress is serious about cracking down on drug abuse, cigarette smoking is a good place to start. He said also that “the time may be right” to revive a bill he introduced several years ago to restrict federal tax subsidies for tobacco growers.