Health Warning Messages are required to cover 75% of the front and back of packages to ensure the buyer sees the messages. These Health Warning Messages consist of frightening images and jarring descriptions. For example, one label shows an extremely thin looking man on his deathbed and the caption reads, “This is what dying of lung cancer looks like”. Intuitively, these labels should scare people and, thus, lower the number of smokers. Research has found that when smokers actively interpret these messages, they experience emotions such as fear and disgust. As a result, the participants decreased or quit smoking (Hammond et al., 2006). That said, I argue that these messages are actually ineffective since, for the most part, smokers would choose not to actively interpret the health labels. While warning messages may cover 75% of the box, the threatening labels only work if smokers spend time processing the