Shocking images to appear on cigarette packets to highlight health risks » Health » 24dash.com

Graphic pictures of throat cancer and rotting teeth are to appear on cigarette packets from today to illustrate the health risks of smoking.

Among the other images smokers will see are rotting lungs, a corpse in a morgue and a body cut open during surgery.

The photos will appear on the back of packets accompanied by a written health warning.

The images replace the previous warnings introduced in January 2003, although the messages "Smoking kills" and "Smoking seriously harms you and others around you" will continue to appear on the front of packets.

New figures showed written warnings had motivated more than 90,000 smokers to call the NHS Smoking Helpline, the Department of Health said.

However, smoking is still the biggest killer in England where it causes the premature death of more than 87,000 people each year.

The photos are expected to be more effective than text, and research suggested that warnings should be changed periodically to maintain their effectiveness, the DoH said.

The smokers' lobby group Forest criticised the new warnings as "unnecessarily intrusive" and "gratuitously offensive".

Forest director Simon Clark said: "We support measures that educate people about the health risks of smoking, but these pictures are designed not just to educate but to shock and coerce people to give up a legal product.

"They are unnecessarily intrusive, gratuitously offensive, and yet another example of smokers being singled out for special attention.

Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) director Deborah Arnott said: "The stark images in the picture warnings on tobacco products are a call to action to smokers to quit, and the evidence is that they work.

"The evidence also shows that picture warnings work better on plain packs, so we are urging the Government to also implement legislation to require the removal of pack branding to maximise the impact of the these images."

Canada was the first country to introduce picture warnings in 2001.

Research a year later found 31% of ex-smokers said the images had motivated them to quit the habit while 27% said they had helped them to remain non-smokers, according to the DoH.

Graphic images are now used on tobacco products sold in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, Venezuela, Thailand and Uruguay.