Smokers are less likely to seek cigarettes if the packaging is plain, as opposed to packs that have brands on them, according to new research from the Universities of Exeter and Bristol in the U.K.
Researchers recruited 144 adult smokers to participate in experiments that tested the Pavlovian response to smoking stimuli. They were instructed to choose whether or not to press a key that could lead to cigarettes or a key that could lead to chocolate, but they didn’t know whether or not the keys would truly pay off in the end.
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In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration mounted a campaign to require that cigarette packs have large, graphic health warnings with diseased body parts (like lungs, or the corpse of a smoker) but backed down in 2013 when faced with a legal battle against America’s largest tobacco companies.
An estimated one billion people smoke and tobacco-related diseases kill nearly six million people a year, according to the World Health Organization.
