Ethnic and racial blindness in EU anti-smoking campaigns, slogans and images

Excerpt

The USA took the lead when in 1964 it legally required cigarette manufacturers to include a warning about the potential danger posed by cigarettes [1, 2]. Although the warning introduced by Surgeon General Luther Terry has been criticised as weak [3], there can be little doubt that it was both an important milestone in the start of a concerted attack on Big Tobacco and set an important precedent and guide for future anti-smoking text warnings. Big Tobacco is collectively five companies that control 90% of the world’s cigarette market which produce more than 5.4 billion cigarettes a year [4]. Despite the best efforts of Big Tobacco [5], the text-based anti-smoking warnings in many countries became more direct and forceful. Historically, the issue of racial invisibility or under-representation in anti-smoking tobacco packaging warnings was less of an issue when such warnings were purely text-based. Assuming a certain level of literacy in the official language or languages of the state, anti-smoking warnings were essentially ‘colour-blind’. …