Canada: Health warnings now affixed to every cigarette

Cigarettes with health warnings printed directly on them are now being sold in some Canadian jurisdictions, making it the first country in the world to do so. Tobacco manufacturers have been given until April 30 to ensure that every cigarette produced for sale in Canada has a health warning printed directly on it. Retailers will have an additional three months, until July 31, to ensure the cigarettes they sell comply.[1].

The warnings include six different messages, in English and French, that can appear on cigarettes, including warnings about the risks of cancer, impotence and organ damage from smoking. At the moment, this only applies to "king-size" cigarettes. The rule will apply to smaller and regular-sized cigarettes from 31 January 2025.

Canada is the first country in the world to implement such a measure.

Starting today, cigarettes will display the following six bilingual health warnings: “Poison in Every Puff,” “Cigarettes Damage Your Organs,” “Cigarettes Cause Cancer,” “Tobacco Smoke Harms Children,” “Cigarettes Cause Impotence,” and “Cigarettes Cause Leukemia.” This is in line with the guidelines for implementing Article 11 (Packaging and Labelling of Tobacco Products) of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which are the most up-to-date recommendations on health warnings, while also taking advantage of existing legislation.

According to Health Canada, these warnings will be replaced every two years with a new set of six warnings, to ensure the messages are "impactful, noticeable and memorable." They will be displayed directly on individual cigarettes, little cigars that have a flip-top paper, and tubes.

In 2001, Canada had already been a pioneer in imposing graphic health warnings on cigarette packages, a measure quickly followed by other countries and considered a best practice in consumer information and prevention. One hundred and thirty-eight countries or territories have followed Canada's lead and now place photo warnings on cigarette packages. The Canadian Cancer Society hopes that the same phenomenon will occur with warnings printed directly on cigarettes.

For Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society, this new measure will allow information to be disseminated to an even wider audience: "A lot of young people are experimenting with borrowing and getting a cigarette from a friend, and they may not see the health warning on the packet, but they will see it on every cigarette. And that makes the cigarette less appealing and less appealing."

The federal government also imposed a series of 14 graphic health warnings on cigarette packages in January 2024. A 2021 study concluded that these warnings increased people's perceptions of the risks of smoking and their intentions to quit, but that they gradually lost their effectiveness over time as people became accustomed to the new graphics.

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[1] Communicated, Poison in every puff: Health warnings now printed directly on cigarettes sold in Canada, a world first, Canadian Cancer Society, published April 29, 2024, accessed April 30, 2024