Canada becomes 1st country to have individual cigarette warnings

Canada has become the first country to sell cigarettes with health warnings printed directly on them to help people butt out or think twice about starting to smoke. A pack of cigarettes bearing exterior warning label and warnings on the filter tips of each individual cigarette is seen in Vancouver, Friday, April 26, 2024.

Individual warning labels will now appear on some cigarettes sold in Canada, in what’s being touted as a world first.

The move comes less than a year after Health Canada regulations took effect requiring the individual labels, as part of an ongoing effort to curb smoking in the country.

As of Tuesday, manufacturers are required to ensure that warnings about harms such as cancer, impotence, leukemia and damage to organs are printed directly on individual cigarettes. Retailers, meanwhile, have until July 31 to sell only packages with those cigarettes.

The new requirements begin with king-size cigarettes, which the Canadian Cancer Society says is the most common size sold.

Regular-size cigarettes, those 70 to 73 millimetres in length, will have similar standards put in place in 2025 with manufacturers’ deadline set for Jan. 31, and retail stores on April 30 of next year.

“This measure is innovative,” Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, which lobbies the federal government for better research, health care and protections, told Global News.

“It’s going to reach every smoker, every day with every cigarette, every puff, in every community.”

There are two sets of six warnings that will change in rotation and be fixed on the paper around the filter in English and French, including statements like “poison in every puff” or “tobacco smoke harms children.”

The hope is the individual labels also help deter children, Cunningham said.

“For kids who experiment, they may obtain a cigarette from a friend, they may not see the health warning on the package, but they’re going to see that health warning,” he said.

Eric Gagnon with Imperial Tobacco Canada, a cigarette manufacturer, told Global News in a statement the new labelling “misses the mark.” Gagnon argues promoting “less harmful” alternatives like vaping or nicotine replacement therapy should have been focused on instead.

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“While the government had a unique opportunity to champion tobacco harm reduction, it unfortunately opted for a path that perpetuates shame and stigma among smokers,” Gagnon, who serves as the company’s vice-president of corporate and regulatory affairs, said.

Advertising, promotion and sponsorship for tobacco are banned in Canada, with warnings on cigarette packs existing since 1972.

This initiative isn’t the first time Canada has been the first to take action when it comes to the tobacco industry, with companies required since 2001 to print pictorial warnings on the outside of cigarette packaging and have inserts with health-promoting messages. As of 2012, the photo warnings have covered 75 per cent of a pack and eight messages have been printed on the inside flap.

Other countries have followed Canada’s lead, with about 138 countries and territories now requiring picture warnings on packages.

Australia has announced that it plans to require individual cigarette warnings, much like Canada. Some have also mulled the idea of changing the legal smoking age, with the U.K. announcing last October planned legislation that would see the smoking age rise by one year every year. MPs sent that bill to the House of Lords, where it will need to pass before it can become law.

Canada, meanwhile, has not looked to change the legal age but in October told Global News that it was addressing tobacco use in other ways, with a goal of achieving its target of less than five per cent of tobacco use by 2035.

More than one million people in Canada have died from tobacco-related illness, including cancer, heart disease and emphysema, since 2000, according to the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.

— with files from The Canadian Press and Global BC’s Jason Pires