Each cigarette sold in Canada effective Aug 1 now comes with an individual health warning that "cigarettes cause impotence" and cancer, and that there is "poison in every puff."
The labeling rule announced in May aims to further crack down on smoking and is a world first.
Canada's then-addictions minister, Carolyn Bennett, had said the new warning labels would be "virtually unavoidable and, together with updated graphic images displayed on the package, will provide a real and startling reminder of the health consequences of smoking."
The Canadian government noted that some young people, who are particularly susceptible to the risk of tobacco dependence, start smoking after being given a single cigarette rather than a pack labeled with health warnings.
In 2000, Canada became the first country to order graphic warnings on packs of cigarettes -- including grisly pictorials of diseased hearts and lungs -- to raise awareness of the health hazards associated with tobacco use.
Smoking has been trending down over the past two decades.
But, according to government data, tobacco use continues to kill 48,000 Canadians each year, and almost half of the country's health care costs are linked to substance use.
Ottawa aims to further reduce the number of smokers in the country to five percent of the population, or about 2 million people, by 2035 -- from about 13 percent currently.
© 2023 AFP
10 Comments
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Speed
I can't believe this legally manufactured and sold without impunity but marijuana isn't here in Japan. So which one is really the "dangerous drug" ?
ebisen
@speed - You make it sound like: "We need yet one more drug on the market, there aren't enough" . Are you for real dude?
albaleo
I don't think they are comparable. The concern with tobacco is about physical health. The concern with marijuana is that it gets you stoned.
Raw Beer
Concern?
Anyway, I wonder if these cigarettes will become a great hit with foreign travelers, wanting to show people back home how #$%&ed Canada is.
I hope the ink they're using isn't more toxic than the tobacco.
I'm sure some Canadians will deal with this in creative ways, replacing "cigaretes" with "Trudeau", or making the entire cigarette black...
Anonymous
How is putting a warning label on individual cigarettes going to reduce smoking?
Any evidence for it? Probably none.
tora
Why not just ban them? Exactly.
Wandora
Tax. Is all.
Johnken6
Well done, Canada. Good to see they care for health and their citizens.
Tobacco companies are so 20th century.
tora
They don't care about the health our their citizens, and neither does your government. The whole system is set up go keep you I'll but under the guise of looking out for your health. People are naive.
Dag Klingstedt
Back in my home country Sweden, the government decided some decades ago to lower the rate of smoking by drastically raising the tax on tobacco. The result was the influx of Russian and Yugoslavian mafia peddling cheap Eastern European cigarettes on the black market. We didn't really have any organized crime in Sweden before that. Gang wars with many casualties ensued. Making something illegal more or less automatically invites organized crime to take advantage of the situation.