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Tobacco pack health warnings increase both knowledge of the harms they warn about, and lead to people thinking more about those harms. Thus, they not only increase knowledge, they also increase the salience of that knowledge

A study of health knowledge and warning labels in Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK in 2002 demonstrated that a large proportion of smokers have inadequate knowledge of the harms of smoking: more than a quarter of smokers did not believe that smoking causes stroke, and fewer than half of smokers believed that smoking causes impotence. Knowledge of health effects was strongest among smokers in Canada, the only country that had pictorial warnings on 50% of the front and 50% of the back of the pack, and weakest among US smokers, where text warnings appear only on the side of the pack. In Canada, where health warnings include the message that smoking causes impotence, almost twice as many smokers (60%) were aware of this health effect compared to smokers from the US (34%), UK (36%), and Australia (36%), where this health outcome was not present in their text labels.¹

Other research showed that Canadian and Australian graphic warnings stimulated more thoughts about the health risks of smoking, than did UK text-based warnings.^{2, 3} 

A further study found that Canadian smokers are also more likely than Mexican smokers to know that smoking causes stroke, impotence, and mouth cancer, as these smoking-related health outcomes are included on Canadian warning labels but not on the Mexican ones.⁴

1.     Hammond D, Fong GT, McNeill A, Borland R, Cummings KM. 2006. Effectiveness of cigarette warning labels in informing smokers about the risks of smoking: findings from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey. Tobacco Control 2006;15 Suppl III):iii19–iii25.

2.     Hammond D, Fong GT, Borland R, Cummings M, McNeill A, Driezen P. 2007. Text and Graphic Warnings on Cigarette Packages: Findings from the International Tobacco Control Four Country Study. Am J Prev Med. 32(3):210-217.

3.     Borland R, Wilson N, Fong GT, Hammond D, Cummings KM, Yong H-H, Hosking W, Hastings G, Thrasher J and McNeill A (2009) Impact of Graphic and Text Warnings on Cigarette Packs: Findings from Four Countries over Five Years, Tobacco Control;  http://static.mgnetwork.com/rtd/pdfs/20090711_toba2.pdf 

4.     Thrasher JF, Hammond D, Fong GT, Arillo-Santillán E. 2007. Smokers’ reactions to cigarette package warnings with graphic imagery and with only text: A comparison of Mexico and Canada. Salud Pública de México, 49 (SuppI).