Smokers in India to get shocking new warnings on cigarette packages

Nearly half of adult males in India use tobacco, and tobacco products are blamed for causing 800,000 deaths in the country each year. The Indian Health Ministry is fighting back with new and shocking picture warnings on all products containing tobacco. Consumers might buy a pack of cigarettes only to find themselves staring at a picture of a corpse or photos of mouth cancers. Not only that, each package will now be required to carry the image of a skull and crossbones and dire warnings such as, "Tobacco causes a slow and painful death."

Will the new packaging work? Officials hope so. With over 200 million citizens using the products every day, tobacco is a threat to the health of the country's citizens. Surprisingly, a public smoking ban, something that's becoming more common in American cities, has had little effect on India's smoking habits. However, other countries, including Australia and Singapore, have started putting pictoral warnings on cigarette packages and recent studies in Canada found that the practice got smokers to cut back or quit.

What do you think? If you smoke, would warnings like these make you think twice before lighting up?