Nation set to become the first to include a ‘written warning’ on every cigarette!

According to The Guardian, Canada is going to become the world’s first country to mandate a written warning on every cigarette due to concerns that pictorial warnings on tobacco packets are losing their effectiveness. The move comes two decades after the country set the standard by adding graphic picture warnings on the packaging of tobacco products.

‘We need to address the fear that these messages may have lost their freshness, and to some extent, we are concerned that they may have lost their impact,’  Carolyn Bennett, minister of mental health and addictions, said at a press conference on Friday.

‘Notably health warnings on individual tobacco products would assist guarantee that these critical messages reach individuals, including children, who frequently access cigarettes one at a time in social contexts, ignoring the information printed on a package’. A consultation session for the planned change was set to begin on Saturday, and the administration hoped for the changes to take effect in the second half of 2023. While the specific language may alter, the present suggestion is, ‘Poison in every puff,’ according to the minister of mental health and addictions.

Bennett also discussed other cigarette packaging warnings, including a long list of smoking’s health impacts such as stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, diabetes, and peripheral vascular disease. Canada implemented visual warnings two decades ago, but the graphics haven’t been changed in a decade. Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, said he hoped the warnings on cigarettes become popular internationally, adding that no other country had established similar restrictions.

‘It’s a warning that you just cannot ignore,’ Cunningham added. ‘ It will reach every smoker with every inhale’, Geoffrey Fong, a professor at the University of Waterloo and main investigator with the International Tobacco Control Approach Evaluation Project, praised the proposed policy. ‘This is a really potentially significant intervention that will increase the effect of health warnings’, Fong added.

Over the years, smoking rates have been slowly dropping. According to Statistics Canada’s most recent statistics, which were released last month, 10% of Canadians reported smoking on a regular basis. By 2035, the government hopes to lower that rate in half. According to StatCan, over 11% of Canadians aged 20 and older reported being current smokers, compared to only 4% of those aged 15 to 19.