Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President, Melbourne

JOURNALIST: ……cigarette packaging?

PHELPS: I think we need to use whatever tactics we can to reduce the numbers of people taking up smoking and to encourage smokers to quit. Nothing can be too graphic. If you look at a patient with lung cancer, if you look at patient with lung disease - that's graphic. Looking at the implications of smoking really just should drive home the message to smokers as strongly possible. The tobacco lobby will try anything within its power to try to water down the images, to try to keep people smoking. We are the AMA and we say that patients' health comes first. People need to understand what they are doing to their bodies and the way to do that is to show them as graphically as necessary.