Tobacco firms may have to print graphic pictures of rotting lungs and diseased hearts on cigarette packets sold in the European Union after EU authorities agreed a new anti-smoking law today.
The new rules on marketing tobacco products will mean all cigarettes sold in the EU from the start of 2003 must have a health warningcovering 30 per cent of the packet saying "smoking kills", "smoking cankill" or "smoking severely harms you and those around you".
EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner, Mr David Byrne, saidthe law was one step in achieving a cut in the number ofEuropeans that smoke - from one in three down to US levels of less than one in five of the adult population.
The law will also ban manufacturers from using terms which suggestsome of their products - called mild or light - are less harmful tohealth than others.
It will also set a limit on some of the harmful constituents intobacco. EU cigarettes will have a maximum of 10 milligrams of tarper cigarette and for the first time there will be upper limits onnicotine and carbon monoxide.
Tobacco companies will also have to tell governments exactly what they put in their cigarettes, including any potentially harmfuladditives.
The latest EU action against the tobacco industry comes just monthsafter the European Court of Justice threw out, on a legal technicality, a previous European directive that would have banned tobaccoadvertising and sponsorship by 2006.
Mr Byrne said he would propose new legislation to replace that law inthe coming months.