(WCBS)

The New York City health department is moving forward with a plan that would require about 12,000 cigarette retailers to post large anti-smoking signs.

It’s billed as the first such regulation in the United States.

The eye-level signs would have information about the harmful effects of smoking, possibly with an image.

The assistant commissioner for tobacco control, Sarah B. Perl, says it can be effective to display gruesome health effects such as amputations and throat cancer.

The city’s Board of Health is now seeking public comment. At the earliest, it would vote in September.

If the proposal is passed, the department says it’s poised to fend off lawsuits.

President Obama meanwhile cited his own long struggle to quit the cigarettes he got hooked on as a teenager as he signed the nation’s strongest-ever anti-smoking bill Monday, June 22, and praised it for providing critically needed protections for kids.

“The decades-long effort to protect our children from the harmful effects of tobacco has emerged victorious,” Obama said at a signing ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.

The first major report on smoking and health, Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General, was published in 1964. The report showed a link between cigarette smoking and cancer, and called for remedial measures. The first national antismoking coalition was also formed that year and insurance companies began offering discounted rates to non-smokers.