By Kevin Jiang, Toronto Star
April 29, 2024- Shoppers are already noticing some cigarettes individually labelled with health warnings in stores — and pretty soon, it will be the standard.
The Canadian regulation, the first of its kind in the world, will require all cigarette manufacturers to label individual smokes with written, bilingual warnings. The deadline for king-size cigarettes, the most common size sold in Canada, is Tuesday.
“It’s a health measure that is innovative, that reaches the entire smoking population,” Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, told the Star.
“It costs nothing, and it is going to reduce smoking and cancer — so it’s a winner,” he continued. “It’s simply a warning that cannot be ignored … For someone (on) a smoke break, that warning is going to be there for the entire five minutes.”
For now, packs will contain the following six bilingual warnings: “Poison in every puff,” “Cigarettes damage your organs,” “Cigarettes cause cancer,” “Tobacco smoke harms children,” “Cigarettes cause impotence” and “Cigarettes cause leukemia.”
These will be rotated for another set of six warnings every two years, according to Health Canada, keeping the messages “impactful, noticeable and memorable.” They will be displayed “directly on individual cigarettes, little cigars that have tipping paper and tubes.”
Individually labelled smokes are already appearing in stores as cigarette companies and manufacturers make the transition, Cunningham explained.
After the hard deadline Tuesday for king-size cigarettes, smokes measuring 83 to 85 millimetres in length, retailers will have until July 31 to ensure the warnings are present on all king-size packs. These cigarettes comprised 69 per cent of the Canadian market in 2021.
Regular-size cigarettes, or those measuring 70 to 73 millimetres, have a manufacturer deadline of Jan. 31, 2025. All packs must display the warnings in retailers by April 30, 2025.
“We know that many youth experiment by borrowing and by obtaining a cigarette from a friend,” Cunningham said. “They may not see the health warning on the package, but they’re going to see the health warning on the individual cigarette. And it’s going to make the cigarette less attractive, less appealing, less cool to be seen by their peer group.”
The regulations for the new warnings were announced at the end of May last year, and came into force in August that year.
“Tobacco use continues to kill 48,000 Canadians each year,” Carolyn Bennett, minister of mental health and addictions and associate minister of health, said at the time. “We are taking action by being the first country in the world to label individual cigarettes with health warning messages.”
In January, a new round of 14 graphic pictures warning of health consequences on cigarette packages also began appearing in stores, although manufacturers will have longer to print warnings on individual cigarettes.
Studies generally suggest the graphic warnings were effective at raising awareness of the harms of smoking. But while a 2021 review concluded that warnings increased the perceived harms of smoking and users’ intentions to quit, they gradually become less effective over time as people acclimate to the new design.
“After a period of time, warnings do become stale,” Cunningham noted, “and that’s why it’s important to (regularly) change the warnings.”
While Canada was the first to require individually labelled cigarettes — just as it was the first to require graphic warnings on the outside of cartons in 2001 — other countries are expected to follow suit. Australia has already noted its intention to require warnings on cigarettes.
According to the Canadian Cancer Society, tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of disease and death in the nation. In comprises 30 per cent of all cancer deaths, and is responsible for killing around 46,000 Canadians each year.
Based on data from 2022, 3.8 million Canadians still smoke — roughly 12 per cent of the population above the age of 12. As Canada works toward its goal of reducing that figure to less than five per cent of all Canadians by 2035, it’s clear the nation still has far to go.
“We need to do a lot more things,” Cunningham finished. ” … It’s going to be essential that many new measures be adopted in order to achieve that objective.”
