BANGKOK?Graphic warnings on cigarette packs may just do the trick in convincing Filipino smokers to kick the habit.

Ninety-six percent of Filipino smokers said graphic health warnings would most likely make them quit compared to bland text warnings, according to a recent study of the Council on Tobacco for Health and Air of the Philippine College of Chest Physicians.

The results of the study conducted last April was disclosed here by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Alliance, Philippines during a meeting on tobacco control policies between Philippine legislators and Thai health officials.

Thailand is the fourth country in the world and the second in Asia to challenge the giant tobacco firms for the right to mandate graphic health warnings on cigarette packets.

The other pioneering countries are Canada, Brazil and Singapore.

Ironically, while such a measure still has a long way to go in the Philippine Congress, the cigarette packs carrying graphic warnings that are being sold in Thailand are made in the Philippines.

This was one of the surprises that Filipino legislators encountered as they took pointers from their Thai counterparts on how to do battle to have graphic warnings carried on cigarette packs sold in the country.

In the study, called ?Impact of Health Warnings among Filipinos,? 1,307 respondents in Metro Manila were exposed to both text and graphic health warnings to find out which was more effective in controlling tobacco use. Fifty percent of the respondents were smokers.

Forty-one percent of the smokers admitted that text-based health warnings were not enough to elicit any emotion or concern from them. Only 21 percent agreed that text warnings gave enough information on the hazards of smoking.

Twenty-seven percent said the pictorial warnings were so scary that they thought of kicking the cigarette habit.

The study also revealed that 96.71 percent of the respondents opted to see graphic health warnings on cigarette packs than text precautions, which usually go unnoticed.

?You have to show them how [smoking] actually kills,? said Prakit Vathesathogkit, senior adviser to the Thaihealth Promotion Foundation.

Representatives Anna York Bondoc, Arthur Pingoy Jr., Magtanggol Gunigundo, Teodoro Casiño, Neil Tupas Jr. and Jose Antonio Roxas, who were here for the conference, filed House Bill 3364 which proposes the use of graphic-based health warnings on cigarette packs.

Their study tour was hosted by Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), an organization that helps advocates for the implementation of the World Health Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

The FCTC prescribes that anti-smoking warnings on cigarette packs should range from a minimum of a third to half of a cigarette packet. But it gives governments the option to mandate picture-based warnings.

The legislators are scrambling to pass the bill to meet the September 2008 deadline for the Philippines as party to the FCTC.