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Canada will start putting health warnings on INDIVIDUAL cigarettes – the first country in the world to do so

  • Smokers will find a label on each cigarette they light with phrases like ‘Cigarettes cause cancer’, ‘Tobacco smoke harms’ children and ‘Poison in every puff’
  • The new regulation comes into effect on August 1 and will ‘make it virtually impossible to avoid health warnings’ on tobacco products
  • It was first announced last year and it is being introduced to encourage more people to quit smoking.  Tobacco kills around 48,000 Canadians each year

Canada will soon become the first country in the world to put health warnings on individual cigarettes.

Smokers will find a label on each cigarette they light with phrases like ‘Cigarettes cause cancer’, ‘Tobacco smoke harms’ children and ‘Poison in every puff’. 

The new regulation introduced by Health Canada comes into effect on August 1 and will ‘make it virtually impossible to avoid health warnings’ on tobacco products.

Tobacco companies are going to be required to print the health warnings directly on each cigarette and they will appear in English and French, the country’s official languages.

The plan was first announced last year and it is being introduced to encourage more people to quit smoking. 

Canada will soon become the first country in the world to put health warnings on individual cigarettes

Canada will soon become the first country in the world to put health warnings on individual cigarettes 

Smokers will find a label on each cigarette they light with phrases like 'Cigarettes cause cancer', 'Tobacco smoke harms' children and 'Poison in every puff'

Smokers will find a label on each cigarette they light with phrases like ‘Cigarettes cause cancer’, ‘Tobacco smoke harms’ children and ‘Poison in every puff’ 

It will be phased in and Health Canada anticipates that retailers will only sell tobacco products that feature the new warning labels directly on the cigarettes by April 2025. 

‘The new Tobacco Products Appearance, Packaging and Labelling Regulations will be part of the Government of Canada’s continued efforts to help adults who smoke to quit, to protect youth and non-tobacco users from nicotine addiction, and to further reduce the appeal of tobacco,’ officials said.

Warning labels are already printed on the front of cigarette packages but the new regulation is part of an effort to reduce tobacco use in Canada further to less than five per cent by 2035. 

Labelled products include individual cigarettes, little cigars, tubes and other tobacco products.

King-size cigarettes will be the first to feature the individual warnings by the end of July 2024 before regular-sized cigarettes and other products by the end of April 2025.

And other measures will accompany the new regulations to reduce the number of smokers. 

‘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,’ Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos said.

Tobacco companies are going to be required to print the health warnings directly on each cigarette and they will appear in English and French, the country's official languages

Tobacco companies are going to be required to print the health warnings directly on each cigarette and they will appear in English and French, the country’s official languages

‘Our government is using every evidence-based tool at our disposal to help protect the health of Canadians, especially young people.’ 

Tobacco is said to kill around 48,000 Canadians each year.

Canada’s minister of mental health and addictions, Carolyn Bennett, said: ‘We are taking action by being the first country in the world to label individual cigarettes with health warning messages.’

The country has required warning labels on the front of cigarette packets since 1989, although this is behind the US which was the first nation in the world to introduce the health warnings in 1965.

Smoking rates have significantly dropped since from 42 per cent in the mid-1960s to 11 per cent in 2021, according to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cigarette smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer, heart disease and stroke and is the leading cause of preventable death in the US. 

More than 480,000 people die in America each year from smoking.  

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This post first appeared on Daily mail