Canada is the first country in the world to enforce pictorial health warnings on cigarette packets in 2002 that has now disgracefully become the first country to impose individual cigarette stick health warnings to be printed on each cigarette. Although cigarettes cannot be sold individually those who are making them will however be kindly requested by Canadian law to print health warnings on the cigarette paper of each cigarette stick contained in the same packet which should also be required by law to carry a health warning. The law that was published on the Canada Gazette will be enforced from next year onwards by which time sellers are required to stock cigarettes with individually printed health warnings which are wrapped up in packets which are also required to be in generic packaging AND carry health warnings, whichever comes first.
The consultation that took place for this law to be voted for and pass was during the spring and summer of 2019. So it came as a complete surprise four years later as it was passed in the Canadian Houses of Parliament. The only thing it cannot foresee is how health warnings can be printed on Rizla papers! The legislation takes effect from August 2023 and by July 2024 king-sized cigarettes should have health warnings printed on them which will have to be printed on regular sized cigarettes by April 2025 even though cigarettes are sold in packets and not individually.
Messages such as “Poison in every puff” and “Cigarettes cause Leukaemia” printed in English or French or “Cigarettes damage your organs” and “Cigarettes cause cancer” must be printed on each separate cigarette stick until the end of April 2025 with king-sized cigarettes having to do so by the end of July 2024 and tobacco product packages having to do so by the end of April 2024, according to Canadian legislation taking effect from August. The messages will be printed across the filter of each stick which will be white-coloured instead of orange-beige like it is in mentholated cigarettes.
Within the next day from the announcement, Australian health minister Mark Butler emerged from the other side of the Commonwealth making the same plans for Australia. As it turned World No Tobacco Day on the 31st of May, a law 300 pages long was drafted in Canberra dictating separate health warnings to be printed on each cigarette and health warning insert cards in packets, along with strengthening existing forms of generic packaging restrictions, which will be proposed to the parliament later this year and may be passed by April 2024.
Labor’s Mark Butler said that “Broadly, these measures that are contained in the draft legislation seek to deal with marketing strategies that the tobacco industry has put in place to get around the intention of the plain packaging and graphic package we put in place 10 years ago. Over the last 10 years, it’s clear there has been no significant action taken to build on the reforms that Nicola Roxon led a decade ago. Here in Australia, still, tobacco, or smoking, is the leading cause of preventable death and disability in this country. About 12 per cent of Australians are daily smokers, although that’s come down dramatically over the last decade, but it still accounts to over two million Aussies smoking on a daily basis. As a result of no additional action taken in recent years, smoking rates have essentially flatlined. This legislation as I said, is in draft form being published as an exposure draft today along with a consultation paper. I intend to introduce this into the parliament later this year, and we intend to get this legislation passed by the parliament by the first of April, 2024. There will be a transition period of 15 months, so the new regulations, new requirements, will come into effect on the first of July 2025.”.
Because the separate health warnings will be printed onto the filter of each cigarette instead of them being beige-orange, and the cigarette has not yet been registered as a patent in the Americas, its place of invention, it is clear to deduce that both Labor-led countries of the Commonwealth are emerging to take advantage of this fact to familiarise the invention with its reference in the legislation.
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