2023-05-31 17:52:10
The messages will be phased in from August 1 and will include phrases such as “Poison in every puff”, “Tobacco smoke harms children” and “Cigarettes cause cancer”.
48,000 Canadians continue to die each year from tobacco use, Dependencies Minister Carolyn Bennett said in a statement, noting that Canada was “the first country in the world” to implement such a measure.
A similar bill had been debated in the British parliament in 2022, without success.
“With this bold step, health warnings will be virtually unavoidable and will serve as a stark reminder of the health consequences of smoking, paired with updated images displayed on the packaging,” the minister said.
To justify this measure, the Canadian government says it has found that some young people, particularly sensitive to the risk of tobacco addiction, start smoking following having received a single cigarette rather than a package with health warnings.
In 2000, Canada was the first country to order the affixing to cigarette packages of pictorial warnings, including showing macabre representations of diseased hearts and lungs, in order to raise awareness of the health risks associated with smoking.
Since then, smoking has been on a downward trend and Ottawa aims to further reduce the number of smokers in the country to 5% of the population, or regarding 2 million people, by 2035, from regarding 13% currently. .
According to government data, nearly half of the country’s healthcare costs are related to the use of psychoactive substances.
© 2023 AFP
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