Health Canada to usher in plain packaging, new strict rules on tobacco products

Cigarette packaging will move to a ‘slide and shell’ format over the flip top, allowing health warnings to be the largest in the world and more impactful. These will be mandatory by Nov. 2021. Further timelines are set for cigars and other tobacco products.

Health Canada’s new requirements for packaging for cigarettes. (Health Canada)

Canada will become the 14th nation to require plain packaging, behind countries like Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France, Hungary, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“It is going to make a difference to protect kids, reduce tobacco use, prevent cancer and ultimately save lives,” Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, said. “This is an addictive deadly product. It should not be sold in packages that make it more appealing.”

Alongside the plain packaging rules, slim, superslim, and cigarettes longer than 85 mm will be banned.

Cunningham praised these stipulations, saying these kinds of cigarettes are associated with weight loss and fashion and are one of the leading factors for why teenage girls pick up smoking.

The measures, Cunningham said, are very effective over time and studies have proven the rules to be credible policy.

The regulations are recommended by the World Health Organization and the Canadian Cancer Society has advocated for plain packaging since the 1990s.

“The evidence is overwhelming that plain packaging is an effective way to drive down tobacco use, especially among young people,” Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor said in a press release. “Reducing the rate of smoking among Canadians is a top priority for us.”

However, one of the worlds largest tobacco companies, Imperial Tobacco, issued a statement ahead of Wednesday’s announcement, slamming it as “tried, tested and failed.”

“While the federal government proceeds to impose their plain packaging policy on the legal tobacco industry, over 20 per cent of the market remains controlled by illegal operators and criminal organizations selling products outside of any regulatory framework and untaxed – depriving Canadian governments of over $2 billion in tax revenue every year,” they wrote.

The statement went on to say the illegal tobacco problem in Canada “is poised to get much worse” as “it will be impossible to differentiate between a legal and illegal product.”

To this, Cunningham said if the measures don’t work, “why oppose it?”

“They have spent millions of dollars trying to block this,” he said.

The new policy is part of Canada’s Tobacco Strategy, which aims to drive down tobacco use to five per cent of the population by 2035. It kills over 45,000 Canadians each year, according to data from the Canadian Cancer Society.

Numbers from the 2017 Canadian Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey found 18 per cent of Canadians aged 15 and older had used at least one tobacco product in the past 30 days, an increase from 15 per cent in 2015.

About 17 per cent of the population, or four million Canadians, use tobacco.

Cunningham expects the new rules to slowly erode at the nation’s smoking rate over time.

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tyler.marr@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @JournoMarr

by Tyler Marr

Health Canada to usher in plain packaging, new strict rules on tobacco products

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