Picture of lung cancer surgery scar as warning on packs in France in 2018 and a picture used in 1994 in an advocacy campaign

Above is one of the pictorial warnings now posted on cigarette packs. I discovered this one on a pack that had been left on the pavement. It immediately brought me back 24 years, in 1994: look below at the picture of the surgery scar of a lung cancer patient I used while leading the French National Committee for Tobacco Control in April 1994 in a campaign to defend the Loi Evin, the 1991 Tobacco Control Act that was then under attack. I also posted the text that was a the back of this card (all in French of course). The scars are not on the same side of the back and the 1994 one is more personal showing the face of the patient (who had agreed for us to use it). Haunting. I spoke with a few smokers. They know of all the pictorial warnings and they avoid some they find especially disturbing (about mouth cancer, about an amputated leg) but often they hide them under a cover. When I bought the pack, the tobacconist offered to sell me one.