The Canadian law came into force this week on Monday, August 1, requiring individual health warnings to be printed on each cigarette separately and in addition to the illustrated warnings printed on cigarette packets with uniform standardization.
Each individual cigarette is required by the Canadian government to carry a warning message printed directly on the wrapping paper, in addition to the messages on packets, which since 2018 must be with generic packaging and without commercial decoration.
Tobacco companies have begun to manufacture cigarettes now produced according to these “standardization” specifications, with the aim of replacing them by July 2024 in the market for long cigarettes of 100 millimetres and by next April of 2025 for cigarettes of standard size 75 millimetres.
Canada was the first country in the world to impose illustrated health warnings on cigarette packets in 2002 and has now dreadfully become the first country to impose individual health warnings on cigarettes that must be printed on each cigarette: Although cigarettes cannot be sold individually, those who make them will be requested, however, 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.
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 appear printed on each individual cigarette stick by the end of April 2025, while longer cigarettes must do so by the end of July 2024 and tobacco packages must do so by the end of April 2024; under the Canadian law that came into effect in August. The messages will be printed on the filter of each cigarette, which will be white in colour as they are in menthol cigarettes instead of orange-beige.
The law was passed by the Canadian House of Commons and the Canadian Senate last May 2023 and was set for a consultation period to receive views from the general public during spring and summer 2019. Once it passed Parliament with a positive vote, Australian Health Minister Mark Butler from Australia’s Labor Party government emerged to imitate the same legislation for his country, announcing the implementation of a similar law by April 2024 that could be put to a vote later in 2023.
On this year’s World No Tobacco Day on the 31st of May, a 300-page law was drafted in Canberra dictating separate health warnings to be printed on each cigarette and packet health warning insertion cards, along with strengthening existing forms of general packaging restrictions, which will be proposed to parliament later this year and may be voted on by April 2024.
Not longer after the law for individual cigarette health warnings was passed in Canada, Australian Health minister 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.” referring to the drafted version of the same legislation for his country.
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.
Bring Back Smoking Freedom 