Objective: The purpose of this study is to provide reference material for further regulations which are to be made concerning the opinions of youth about the possible impact of various warning labels.

Material and Method: 494 high school students in Ankara were included in the study. A questionnaire, which measures the impact of text-only and graphic warning labels, was distributed under supervision. Participants were asked to evaluate the efficiency of 16 text-only warning labels with the Likert scaling and state the most efficient graphic amongst three for each of these text-only labels.

Results: “Smoking during pregnancy harms your baby” was chosen as the most efficient text-only warning label by 70%of the participants. “Smoking can damage sperm and decrease fertility” and “Smoking may reduce the blood flow and cause impotence” were the second and third most efficient text-only warning labels amongst all participants, with a selection percentage of 61.9 and 61.1 respectively. The first message above was considered as the most efficient by more female participants than males, whereas the second and third labels were considered the most efficient by more males than females. The pictures with the most graphic content seemed to be preferred.

Conclusion: Participants found the esthetic and sex content messages more efficient than death and disease content ones, which they felt were not yet their concern . It can be speculated that the more visual graphics these messages are enriched with, the more effective they will become.