‘Poison in every puff’: Canada becomes 1st country to have individual cigarette warnings – National | 24CA News
“Poison in every puff.”
Those phrases and others will ultimately seem on each particular person cigarette in Canada on condition that as of Tuesday, a brand new set of Health Canada laws requiring warning labels on particular person cigarettes comes into impact.
By doing so, Canada turns into the primary nation on the planet with such a coverage.
“A message that says ‘poison in every puff’ is something that is very effective,” stated Rob Cunningham, a senior coverage analyst on the Canadian Cancer Society.
“It’ll be there during every smoke break and it’ll be there when kids experiment with borrowing a cigarette from a friend. They may not see the package, but they’re going to see that warning on every cigarette – a warning on every cigarette can’t be missed.”
With the laws now in impact, producers have till the tip of July 2024 to make sure the warnings are on all king-size cigarettes bought, adopted by regular-size cigarettes and little cigars with tipping paper and tubes by the tip of April 2025.
The wording will likely be written in English and French on the paper across the filter. Blunt statements, together with “Tobacco smoke harms children” and “Cigarettes cause cancer,” will likely be among the many first six messages to look.
A second set of six is anticipated to be printed on cigarettes in 2026. Organizations funded by tobacco corporations have opposed the push towards stronger messaging, together with the most recent step.
An instance of cigarette packaging with expanded warnings, together with a warning printed on the cigarettes themselves, is proven on a display screen after a news convention on expanded laws for tobacco merchandise, in Ottawa, on Friday, June 10, 2022.
Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Several research in Canada and elsewhere present the effectiveness of printing warnings on every cigarette, Cunningham stated.
“It’s going to be there for youth who are not yet addicted.… It’s going to be there for new Canadians who immigrated from a country where awareness of the health effects is less, and where health education remains especially important, and that can be done through the cigarettes itself and through the package,” he stated.
“While it’s not going to prevent all smokers from quitting — that’s never the expectation — it’s going to have an impact on some. It’s increased motivation to quit, it’s going to prompt discussion, it’s going to prompt attempts to quit and that’s great — that’s exactly what we want.”
Tobacco use stays one in every of Canada’s most important public well being issues, and is the nation’s main preventable reason for illness and untimely dying, former well being minister Jean-Yves Duclos stated in a May 31 assertion asserting the brand new warning labels.
Tobacco promoting, promotion and sponsorship are banned in Canada, with warnings on cigarette packs relationship again to 1972.
In 2001, Canada grew to become the primary nation to require tobacco corporations to print pictorial warnings on the surface of cigarette packages and embrace inserts with health-promoting messages.
Health Canada has launched the ultimate wording of six separate warnings that will likely be printed immediately on particular person cigarettes because the nation turns into the primary on the planet to take that step geared toward serving to individuals stop the behavior.
Health Canada/The Canadian Press
More than 130 international locations have adopted swimsuit, the Canadian Cancer Society signifies.
To deliver smoking charges down additional, the group and different advocacy teams have known as for a complete technique of beefed-up taxation, laws and programming.
Price promotions and flavoured merchandise — allowed in some provinces — needs to be banned, Cunningham stated.
In May, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Lung Association and the Heart and Stroke Foundation printed an open letter to premiers of all 10 provinces saying they need to push for efforts to scale back smoking throughout settlement negotiations with three main tobacco corporations that they sued years in the past to recoup health-care prices.
Provinces are collectively looking for $500 billion in damages, and the three advocacy teams stated not less than 10 per cent of the cash from a settlement ought to go towards smoking cessation efforts.
“There’s so much more that we need to do,” Cunningham stated.
“The sooner we can do it, the sooner we are going to have an impact to reduce smoking and improve public health.”
— with information from Global News’ Nathaniel Dove and The Canadian Press
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
