Williams: We know graphic warnings work. - photos by Norman Grindley/Acting Photography Editor

An anti-tobacco lobbyist is suggesting that the placing of graphic images on cigarette boxes depicting the likely health impact of smoking would help to curb the practice in Jamaica.

Many other countries have started the initiative to discourage prospective and addicted smokers.

"We have found studies that those countries that have started it have seen a marked reduction in smoking, especially in the first year of pictures coming out," said Dawn Williams, communications officer of the Bloomberg Project, during a Gleaner Editors' Forum yesterday.

The Bloomberg Project is an initiative to stop smoking.

"We know graphic warnings work and we have no doubt that in Jamaica, as signatories of the National Health Law, we are made to implement by law these measures," she said.

Williams added that while people had a right to choose, it is important that they are provided with the necessary information about the effects of smoking.

"We are saying education alerts people to many things they didn't think of. Too many people don't know the consequences."