Canada will be the first nation to start printing warnings directly onto individual cigarettes in a bid to deter young people from starting smoking and encourage others to quit.
The warnings, which will be in English and French, will include phrases like “Cigarettes cause cancer” and “Poison in every puff”.
The new regulations go into effect on Tuesday.
Starting next year, Canadians will begin to see the new warning labels.
By July 2024 manufacturers will have to ensure the warnings are on all king-size cigarettes sold, and by April 2025 all regular-size cigarettes and little cigars with tipping paper and tubes must include the warnings.
The phrases will appear by the filter, including warnings about harming children, damaging organs and causing impotence and leukaemia.
In May, Health Canada said the new regulations “will make it virtually impossible to avoid health warnings” on tobacco products.
A second set of six phrases is expected to be printed on cigarettes in 2026.
The move is part of Canada’s effort to reduce tobacco use to less than 5% by 2035 and follows a 75-day public consultation period that was launched last year.
Canada has required the printing of warning labels on cigarette packages since 1989 and in 2000 the country adopted pictorial warning requirements for tobacco product packages.
Health Canada said it plans to expand on warnings by printing additional warning labels inside the packages themselves, and introducing a new external warning messages.
Dr Robert Schwartz, of the University of Toronto, told BBC News it was good news that Canada was “moving forward with this innovation”.
“Health warnings on individual cigarettes will likely push some people who smoke to make a quit attempt and may prevent some young people from starting to smoke,” he said.
He also pointed to New Zealand, which has introduced very low nicotine cigarettes, as a leader in limiting the use of tobacco.
Mr Schwartz added: “These are the kinds of measures needed if we are serious about decreasing tobacco use.”
Tobacco use continues to kill 48,000 Canadians each year.
“Tobacco use continues to be one of Canada’s most significant public health problems, and is the country’s leading preventable cause of disease and premature death in Canada,” Public Services Minister Jean-Yves Duclos has previously said.
The Canadian Cancer Society, Canada’s Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Lung Association have all praised the warning labels, saying they hope the measures will deter people, especially young people, from taking up smoking in the first place.
Cigarette smoking is widely regarded as a risk factor for lung cancer, heart disease and stroke.
In Canada, the rate of smokers aged 15 years or older is around 10%, according to a national 2021 Tobacco and Nicotine survey but electronic cigarette use has been on the rise.
Back when I was a smoker they could have written on them that it kills a baby every time i take a puff.
I would not have cared.
They article mention it’s more about discouraging teens from starting smoking than making current smokers quit.
It kind of make sense since you start smoking by receiving a single cigarette not by buying a pack. I know at my high school a lot of smokers started smoking by buying individual smoke from the smoke pusher
Too bad they don’t require this for alcohol.
I laugh about the flavored vape bans “think of the children, only a child would want a fruity or sweet vape” Then you walk into a liqour store and there is now literally “Hard Mountain Dew” “Sunny D Vodka Seltzer” and “Fresca Mixed”. It’s disgusting, alcohol is like the 3rd or 4th leading cause of death and you hear diddly about it. Commercial comes on and they pour a nice 10 ounce glass of “insert whiskey” followed briefly by “Drink Responsibly” in 8pt font.
Tbf Mountain Dew was originally made to be a mixer with whiskey. They’re just cutting out the middle man now.
Never seen that one?
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True.
What would have keept me most from starting to smoke would have been the price.
I mean. A pack of cigarettes is now around 8 swiss francs. Was half that when I started.
I am not sure wether it would be worth that much money for me back when I started when it would have been already as expensive as it is today.
Luckily I found vaping to get me of nicotine. And then stopped all together when I lost my vape pen.
Seems like you could market a line with even worse statements on it:
“This cigarette kills babies”
Yeah here in NZ nobody who smokes really pays attention to the graphic photos of sick children and diseased organs that they put on (legal) packets.
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At that point, let’s just force people to smoke in specific areas where they are forced to listen to Nickelback.
People who smoke are the type of people who like Nickelback.
Bold of them to assume smokers want to live.
Smoking is like hiring a hitman for 5 dollars a day.
Watch the ink used for the printing cause a spike in cancer rates.
Just add it to the list: “The ink used to print this warning is toxic”
Hopefully Canada’s smart enough to use food-grade ink.
eeehhh…
15 years ago I wouldnt have any doubt about that.
Today? Eeeeehhhhh…
Also food-grade stuff can be hazardous to inhale! I make vape juice and there are different flavours to use for inhalation.
Never Knows Best.
If you don’t want people smoking, just grow some testicles and ban it. You’ll probably take a hit in popularity at the next election and lose some money in tax revenue, but people will swap to vapes and you’ll save a load of money on lung cancer treatments and street sweepers.
At this point everyone is well aware that they’re bad for you. More warnings isn’t going to do a thing. Nobody is going to get one of these new printed ones and go “Oh, I didn’t know that!” and stop.
Right, that’s worked so well for every other substance that has been banned. Surely the most addictive drug known to most people will go just as well!
There was probably a nicer way to have said this.
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There’s no way the ink doesn’t make them even worse. I’ve always loved Canada’s over the top approach to visually discouraging smoking by hijacking half the pack with a picture. My favorite when I smoked cigarettes was the one with the kids giving you a judgemental look.
Given the numbers in this article, though, I’m not sure how well it’s working.
Even if it does, I doubt it’s very noticeable against the background terribleness.
One could say the same of the ambient air in much of Canada lately, but I don’t think pouring ink on the trees would better the situation.
Oh yes, the forest fires are terrible for that and other reasons. Stop burning fossil fuels everybody.
All of what Canada is doing(removing flavored cigarettes, removing logos and designs on packaging, banning advertising, warning labels on package and now the cigarettes) is to discourage teen smoking.
It’s working. Less and less teens are smoking(27% in the 90s, 14% in 2008, 5% in 2019 amd 3% in 2020).
In fact smoking is down across the board.
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/canadian-tobacco-nicotine-survey/2020-summary.html
Oh, come on. All those things do nothing to stop teens from smoking, the drop in teen smoking is from educating them in classrooms about the dangers of smoking. Warnings on cigarette packs are just a dog and pony show.
Dangers of smoking is not taught in school in Canada
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If vaping is banned in Canada, smoking should be a felony, it’s WAY worse than vaping.
Canada is trying a ban on flavored vapes but there is a lot of pushback.
Also how would they even…? You can very easily make your own flavours!
Banning the sale of the outright makes it Hader for youth to get them.
Meanwhile alcohol companies are creating products like Sunny D with Vodka, and Hard Mountain Dew…
Smirnoff was my go to “How are you laying this shit on vaping??” example.
Yes vaping is allowed in Canada. They might do a flavour ban similar to NYC though.
If putting diseased lungs on cartons and boxes didn’t do it, what the fuck makes them think this will? Such a waste of time. Lol
What do you mean, “didn’t do it?” It was a famously successful intervention that has been copied around the world. Obviously it didn’t cause every single smoker to quit, but it had a measurable beneficial effect.
No, taxing cigarettes to a point of making it a “luxury” hobby is what did it.
What is your source?
If only they took heart disease this seriously.
like that’s gonna do shit
Lol
Toxic ink?
You don’t smoke the filter bit
From the pictures it doesn’t appear to be printed on the filter but either way you put the filter in your mouth
The phrases will appear by the filter, including warnings about harming children, damaging organs and causing impotence and leukaemia.
Right there in the article. Putting a piece or printed paper in your mouth does not damage your organs, cause impotence nor leukemia.
It says by the filter, not on the filter
They are already smoking toxins.
That’s so cool. I might buy a pack for the first time in years.
What is with this liberal bullshit of not just banning the sell of cigarettes? Not banning smoking, if you want to grow tobacco go for it. If you and other like-minded people want to create cigarettes and smoke them, go for it. But you can’t buy cigarettes at stores anymore.
You can also ban the importation of tobacco and cigarettes.
This would only create an underground market for it, and if we’ve learned anything at this point, those underground markets are impossible to regulate and often are more dangerous and risky to the user.
Legal sales and regulating it is usually much more effective.
Yea I’m not saying we ban cigarettes, I’m saying you can’t mass manufacture them anymore nor sell them retail. I’m not saying people can’t smoke them. What you describe as “underground” is just artisanal, which is 100% fine because the real effect it will have is reduce smoking to a fraction of what happens today.
For context in Canada there are about 1.5billion cigarettes sold per month. If you ban retail sales, and force smaller scales, you absolutely decimate that number which is much more effective then any other bullshit neo-liberal policiy you can come up with.
Underground is not artisanal, underground is cigs smuggled into Canada from the US or Mexico, and containing fillers you would never know.
Sure it would be great if banning the sale of it would work, but it would just make the problem harder to manage.
Still a black market. In my state, recreational marijuana black market skyrocketed when they decriminalized. Very, very few people started growing or prepping their own. But boy did they find for sale it whenever they wanted it.
Here in NZ the government didn’t even ban darts but the high taxes have led to a decent amount of illegal (and potentially unsafe/adulterated) Chinese/Indonesian durries being sold on the black market - got some off a mate half a decade ago that were half the price of the cheapest legal ciggies at the time, and legal ones have gone up by some $15/pack since then!
Because the state is profiting of taxes on the sale. Therefore this type of token warning is done, which fixes nothing.
That’s the real reason.
Correct. And that is ultimately why a liberal capitalist government can never fix anything.
That’s a bit of a strech. Most of what people consider to be communist states haven’t archieved much to further stopping smoking. Cigarettes are way cheaper, and that doesn’t slow down the consumption.
I’m not aware of any goverment that has actually tried to curtail smoking, but if they actually wanted to, there are ways to do it that are more effective then what Canada is doing.
What is this right wing authoritarian, yet somehow the party of freedom, personal responsibility and relief from regulation- bullshit about banning anything?
