Cigarette Companies are disrupting laws for graphic warnings on cigarette packets. Anti-tobacco scientists recently have found that the most offensive images for smokers featured less often than those estimated less worrying.

For example was found that the most predominant of more than 1300 cigarette packets is the image of a "body with toe-tag". Last year it became compulsory for cigarette packets to be covered with one of the seven graphic health warnings.

These involved pictures of rotting teeth, diseased lungs and a cancerous mouth in order to raise awareness of the health effects of smoking especially among children. But a recent study found that tobacco companies were not following regulations to justly distribute the seven graphic health warnings.

Manufacturers who break the regulations can be fined up to $10,000, while retailers can be fined up to $4000, according to a new legislation. Researchers decided to investigate the case, that’s why they bought 168 cigarette packets from Wellington and Wairapapa supermarkets and collected 1208 discarded packets from streets around the country.

And they found that 25.6 percent of the purchased packets and 17.8 percent of the street packets which had the "toe-tag" image considered the least disturbing. This image also appears more often on packs sold by all three of the largest tobacco companies in New Zealand. The most offensive image, the diseased mouth, was found on 7.1 and 13.8 percent respectively.

Professor Hoek said that, by reducing the impact of graphic health warnings, tobacco companies were violating the law and public health policy, which aimed to reduce the serious health impact of smoking. Karen Evison, the Health Ministry's national program manager for tobacco policy and realization, said there was not enough evidence yet to support a prosecution, but the ministry was monitoring the situation.

Almost all scientists reported that graphic health warnings were important as they "de-glamorized" smoking. British American Tobacco, the biggest player in the tobacco industry with about 76 per cent market share, rejected the claims