Current text-only health warning labels on cigarette packets in China have had little impact on smoking rates, according to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC Project) released Tuesday.

Evidence in many countries has demonstrated that pictorial warnings increase knowledge of the harm of smoking among smokers and non-smokers, as well as behaviors associated with quitting. 

Revising the current health warnings in line with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and its Guidelines would increase awareness about smoking-related harm, and encourage Chinese smokers to quit, said Professor Geoffrey Fong, ITC Project principal investigator and co-author of the report.

The convention calls for warning labels covering 50 percent or more of the tobacco pack. China ratified the WHO FCTC in 2005, and the treaty came into legal force in China in 2006, but the warning labels just cover 30 percent of the packet.

"It's well and truly time for China to kick its tobacco habit. Indeed, the country's future economic and social prosperity depends on it," said Dr Bernhard Schwartländer, WHO representative in China.

Liang Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that a national law on tobacco-control is likely to be set up next year, but the possibility of imposing pictorial health warnings on the cigarette packages is slim.

Nearly 30 percent of China's over 1 billion adults are smokers. Conflicts of interest are caused by the fact that the authority which sells cigarettes is the same that regulates the industry.