Canada’s government is proposing putting health warnings on individual cigarettes in what would be a world-first way of tackling the habit. Canada is poised to become the first country in the world to require that a warning be printed on every cigarette.
It all started 23 years ago, according to the BBC when Canada became the first and only country to put graphic warnings on cigarettes. By 2007 this number had grown to nine – 5 percent of the global population – before gradually expanding to cover all 28 members of the European Union, and now the government wants to take it one step further.
“We need to address the concern that these messages may have lost their novelty, and to an extent, we worry that they may have lost their impact as well,” the minister of mental health and addictions, Carolyn Bennett, said at a news conference on Friday, reports The Guardian.
“Adding health warnings on individual tobacco products will help ensure that these essential messages reach people including the youth, who often access cigarettes one at a time in social situations, sidestepping the information printed on a package.”
A 75-day consultation period began on Saturday, according to the BBC, and the government plans to add the requirement in the second half of next year.
The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada welcomed the new proposal. “Canada will now have the strongest health warning regime for cigarettes in the world,” the foundation’s CEO, Doug Roth was quoted as saying by CBC Canada News,
In Canada, with a population of more than 38 million, tobacco use is still the leading preventable cause of illness and premature death. In 2020, according to Statistics Canada, there were over 4 million Canadians who smoked daily or occasionally.
An estimated 48,000 Canadians die each year as a result of smoking, according to the Canadian Lung Association.
Some researchers were skeptical that the warning-on-every-smoke policy will make much difference, according to the New York Times. Curbing availability and raising taxes on cigarettes does work, they say. A spokesman said the Canadian subsidiary of Philip Morris supports the warnings.
The government hasn’t decided on wording yet, but the frontrunner is “Poison in every puff.”
