Canada launches warning labels on each cigarette
Canada launches warning labels on each cigarette
Canada is the first nation to use warnings on individual cigarettes in an effort to deter smoking.
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.
Is this really necessary? Aren't most smokers, y'know, aware of the dangers of smoking by now? At some point I wonder if the warnings will get annoying enough that people will start to actively defy them out of spite instead of just passively ignoring them.
“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.
The constant barrage of negativity and warnings may help keep kids from picking it up.
They have ONE idea to stop people smoking and by god they're gonna use it
It's similar to commercials and ads. Everyone thinks they are not affected by such things, but pretty much everyone is affected by them on a subconscious level. Why would companies such as coca cola spend millions of dollars on advertisements? After all, virtually everyone already knows what coca cola is.
Could someone smart enlighten me on why cigarettes continue to be allowed to be sold if we know that it causes cancer and costs the healthcare system millions (billions?) each year? I know we can't suddenly stop production overnight but can't they gradually putting a stricter ban on it until it's almost impossible to get? Is it smokers being too addicted? Is it tobacco lobby being too strong?
Because people will still smoke even if you ban cigarettes. Legalizing cigarettes actually provides a way for governments to regulate production and enforce safety standards, while getting a cut of the profits by sales tax.
Exactly, if you made them illegal you would open up a huge black market while making the products likely more dangerous. This would put further strain on our healthcare system, while decrease funding as the government would no longer be getting taxes on the sale of cigarettes.
Optionally we can do (worldwide) what Australia does: an additional 65% tax.
This tax is increased year on year too
Yeah because fuck poor people with addictions, am I right fellas? /s
2 things (one of which you mentioned)
- Lobbying
- Makes money for the government (taxes)
Lobbying in the tabacco industry is crazy strong, they have so much money that, much alike to the oil industry, they will keep selling their products no matter the risks.
There's also the fact that the government makes money off the sales and imports of tobacco products. The revenue is strong enough to counter the money spent on healthcare, etc.
Think history here. Think about the crazy, depraved shit western leaders would do over tobacco in the past. Like American colonization was propped up quite hard by tobacco addiction. Tobacco is pretty much soft cocaine, many of the same irritable and addicted side effects. Personally most people I know say cigs are harder to quit than coke.
Banning tobacco would pretty much create a new problem drug out of nowhere. It would be like if we banned coffee. Historically speaking, humans have been very okay with killing each other over coffee. Numerous countries have had their entire histories change around coffee. Sure coffee does have some health issues, especially with American excess and people drinking full drip pots at home. But coffee isn't truly an issue until people don't have it, yk?
I bet it would be a lot more effective if they just printed a penis down the length of every cigarette.
Wouldn't it make smoking more cool?
My friend from Canada comes to visit and is a smoker. She brings packs with her and the entire pack is covered in warnings and pictures. I asked her if it bothers her and and she said, "I don't even notice them anymore." I highly doubt putting a warning on each cigarette is going to do anything.
People who have lung cancer continue to smoke in the hospital. Alcoholics continue to drink, even after massive accidents.
People addicted to things don't care.
It's not that they don't care, it's that they can't stop.
"Poison in every Puff"
Don't threaten me with a good time!
Joking aside, I'm fairly ambivalent about this as a smoker. I hope it helps people avoid smoking but not sure how effective these warnings are.
Former smoker. The specific medical warnings are good imo. "Poison in every puff" is a little too goofy and my inner teenager reaction is just "hell yeah" hahaha. Which is funny, but also counterproductive.
Long time ago my brand was Death cigarettes. The pack had a skull on it and a portion of the price of packet went to cancer research. I knew that smoking was bad idea but it was an excellent drug delivery system.
Though if it just means it costs the cigarette companies a bit more to produce each cigarette and makes it harder for them to divert inventory for one market to another if their predictions turn out not so good, that's still a win.
Though, now I'm suddenly wondering why cigarette company profits aren't taxed at like 90%.
I quit smoking almost a decade ago. But I feel like if I was still smoking this would only make me want to smoke more. Watching the warnings slowly burn away would be relaxing.
They fked up
They should've printed anatomical lungs on the cigarette that showed them getting darker with soot as the cig burns
More ominous and a picture is worth a 1000 words. And some ppl dont/cant read tbf
Completely and utterly pointless.
This will not change anything. It won't convince any more people to quit.
Smoking trends have been on the correct trajectory for decades now. I recall seeing a scientific study on Reddit a few years ago that stated in cases like this where people are faced with overwhelming evidence contrary to their current opinions or lifestyles, people tended to double and triple-down on their opinions and habits. The more push there was, the bigger the blow-back. People are stubborn even when it comes to their health.
I have little doubt that the smoking trend will continue to drop, but wasting ever more resources with gimmicks like this might actually slow that downward trend some. Smokers know cigarettes are dangerous and cause cancer. Everyone does. It is beyond common knowledge at this point. Just let it all play out.
oof you need to keep more up to date on that kind of data, the trend has reversed in recent years with teenage and childhood vaping creating a new pathway to smoking.
Smoking is still going down. The disposable vapes right now are so strong that they make cigarettes pointless. Can't even feel a smoke after I've had one of those cheap 50mg vapes for a few days.
In marketing, this would be considered an awareness campaign. The problem is, that everyone knows.
IMO, this is akin to Google advertising that their search engine exists, it's pretty good, and you should try it. Alternatively, it would be apple informing people that they make electronics like computers and cellphones.... (Not a specific one, just.... In general). Or Nike running ads to say that they make shoes.
Thanks, everyone knows that (household name) does (the thing it does), this is not helpful.
Is the paint cancerous?
Yes that's the point, if you get paint cancer first, you won't ever get cancer from the sigarets themselves.
If they ignored the warning on the pack, they're gonna ignore these too.
Maybe "they" will. Worked on me though. Took sometime but after years of the warnings it finally sunk into me how dumb smoking was and I quit. Some people are not reachable but the anti smoking campaign is working because we've seen huge reduction in smokers since its started
Education and awareness isn't the only reason we see less smokers.
Less harmful alternatives with the ability to allow users to taper off have now become common place.
Agreed, it's a very stupid idea. They should print 'Known by the state of California to cause cancer' just to drive home how incredibly stupid this idea is.
If the ink causes cancer...
Double cancer?
Literally.
It will cancel out the cancer from smoking. /s
Let's add a warning label to every bottle of alcohol /s
They are actually considering adding warning labels to booze in Canada like they have on cigarette packages. I'm unsure if they'll go full gory photos of damaged organs and dying people but they are thinking of putting a label of some sort on it.
I mean, if the concern is public health, I don't see why not. To be honest, I'm actually kind of suprised that they haven't yet. Cannabis, too.
It might be a bit of a pain for companies to re-fit their labelling machines with the new labels, but after the hypothetical switch there would probably be nearly no difference in terms of manufacturing. Waiting for the labels to arrive would probably take the longest.
Source: I've worked in food manufacturing
What about e-cigs and vape? They're the new hip and most young people are catering to that now some even rationalizing that they do it because it doesn't have nicotine and is therefore not dangerous.
"Never knows best".
This is stupid. Every one knows that cigarettes are bad for you. Maybe fix the housing market, and opiate crisis before going after something like smoking, which plenty of productive people do.
There is no cost to the government to mandate that cigarettes have this printed on each one.
Fixing other things will cost the government a lot of money.
It does not cost the government a lot of money to abolish single-family zoning.
Smoking costs all of us shit loads of money every year. I know it feels easy to shit on this initiative, but whatever, smoking needs to be eradicated.
Until people are willing to write waivers that they will fully pay their personal healthcare costs we have to keep disincentivising smoking.
Just pay for it with tobacco taxes.
Safety theatre. They just want to make sure beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you know that you're doing the bad thing and you only have yourself to blame, regardless of any evidence that the public is well aware of the facts, and that the ones still smoking know this and either don't care or simply cannot quit for whatever reason.
Next up, we're going to start tattooing "smoking kills" across the outside of everyone's index finger at birth, so if they ever start smoking, the message is always visible as they puff on their cancer stick.
We do all this to save the children, who, evidently, don't give any shits.
Denis Leary: It doesn't matter how big the warnings on the cigarettes are; you could have a black pack, with a skull and crossbones on the front, called TUMORS, and smokers would be around the block going, "I can't wait to get my hands on these f***ing things! I bet ya get a tumor as soon as you light up!"
Funny enough tale is he actually quit a while ago, but there are a handful of folks that legitimatly don't give a damn how may warnings of what type you put on there. It seems a lot more practical to just continue to raise the tax on them to fund the health system detriments they pose.
SMOKING WORDS CAUSES CANCER
I was wondering about that. Is there a sleeve or are they printed right on the cigarette?
At the start of the cigarette propaganda machine, asbestos filters were added to cigarettes to make them safer.
I want to say that it isn't being done on purpose, but there is no way I believe that inhaling ink isnt a larger carcinogenic risk than the tobacco alone.
Creating a red herring problem to baselessly add pathos to your power trip.
"The phrases will appear by the filter, including warnings about harming children, damaging [...]"
Looks like it might be on the filter part though the wording is kinda ambiguous
When I ran the tobacco lockup in a grocery store old, nearly dead people would specifically request boxes or cartons with the less disturbing images on them.
I actually think this could be a good idea as a deterrent. It’s easy enough to ignore the images and words on the box, but to have to see it every time you pull out and puff on a cigarette might be more effective.
I dunno, lighting the cigarette and watch the words slowly burn away might have the opposite effect on me personally.
Yes, I imagine if you’re (not you specifically) edgy or depressed the words wouldn’t much of a deterrent at all. Might even be “cool.” But in that case I figure you’d likely be smoking already and not making the best life decisions in general.
Makes perfect sense. The warnings on every pack have stopped being effective so start printing lessor warnings on the part that's immediately thrown away.
Honestly why not skip the middle man and pass legislation to get them to stamp the warning directly in my lungs
Let me guess, no minimum age increase still? So not dealing with the root of the problem.
Kids will bypass the age limit anyway
That will always be the case no matter what we do. No need to worry about that.
This is so stupid, they know they are bad for them and they keep puffing away. So why waste the resources?
Reminds me of Bill Burr's take on DV
What resources? The cost to print those messages is so small and shouldered by the manufacturer. The government doesn't care it's going to cost another half cent per cigarette wrapper and the majority of legally purchased cigarette cost is tax at this point.
I more curious if they will have to be printed on the big bags of smokes people get from the resi.
Exactly. The cigarette companies are printing on the individual cancer sticks anyway.
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You need the know context. Canada's has universal healthcare and it costs taxpayers too much money to treat cigarette related illnesses.
Collect them all!
I want a pack of these extremely bad, those look hard af
Wayne: I'll have a dart...wait a minute.
Dan: What is it, Waynes?
Wayne: It says here on my dart that "cigarettes cause impotence".
Dan: Wells, you can always enjoys watching other people's kids falls off of bikes, Waynes.
Wayne: (takes a long drag) I could watch kids fall off of bikes all day long, Dan. All (drag) day (drag) long (drag).I think the next step should be that, while you're smoking the smoke writes "Smoking Cause Cancer" in Morse code.
😂 😂 😂
Stupid fixation for idiots with control issues.
It is all about creating and enforcing a subclass to abuse and shame.
... what?! Canada has universal health care and it costs taxpayers too much money to treat cigarette related illnesses. It's all about educating the population about the risk and having a healthier population.
I thought that when I first read this thread, but a little googling revealed that cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada (as of 2019). With that perspective, it makes a little more sense why they would be targeting this issue specifically, even if it is almost guaranteed to not stop the majority of users.
I see your point, but also, it takes 40 to 60 years for cancer to manifest from cigarettes. At that, there are SO many other cancer sources, that you cannot associate the cancer solely to the cigarettes.
Baby powder, antacids, aspertame. Those are the most recent carcinogens that have actually been shown the cause cancer in a more aggressive timeframe, and I would go so far to say that it took so long to discover those dangers because doctors just blamed ALL THE CANCER on the cigarettes.