Health Canada has released the final wording of six separate warnings that will be printed directly on individual cigarettes as the country becomes the first in the world to take that step aimed at helping people quit the habit.HO/The Canadian Press
The federal government announced on Wednesday that, starting next year, every individual cigarette in a pack of smokes will have to carry a printed health warning.
No, this is not satire. As soon as next July, tiny messages such as “Cigarettes damage your organs” and “Poison in every puff” will be crammed onto the filter end of king-size cigarettes (printed in a non-toxic ink, one hopes). The rollout will continue until April, 2025, by which time the wrappers on all cigarette sizes, and on cigars and other tobacco products, will be similarly tattooed.
“This bold step will make health warning messages virtually unavoidable,” Carolyn Bennett, the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, said in a press release.
The Trudeau government is the first in the world to go this far, which isn’t surprising. Only a government as convinced of its own virtue as this one is would believe that literally putting words into people’s mouths was the logical next step in what we all recognize is an important public-health battle.
In Canada and around the world, tobacco use continues to be a leading preventable cause of illness and premature death. Some 48,000 Canadian users die from it each year.
Ottawa’s stated aim is to reduce tobacco use to 5 per cent of the population by 2035. Among its more visible initiatives since 2001 is the requirement to include increasingly gruesome images of tumours and diseased organs on cigarette and cigar packaging – Canada was the first country to do so. Since 2019, Ottawa has also required cigarette and cigar packaging to be a single drab colour.
Provinces and municipalities have taken steps over the past two decades, too, such as banning smoking in offices and public places, and requiring vendors to hide their cigarette displays from sight.
There is solid evidence that these efforts and others are paying off. The percentage of people who smoke daily in all age groups has dropped steadily since 2015, according to Statistics Canada, landing at 8.4 per cent in 2021.
Daily smoking rates for youths aged 12 to 17 are so low – hovering under 1 per cent in 2021 – that Statistics Canada says it can’t come up with a reliable estimate.
Over all, the total number of daily and occasional smokers has fallen from 17.7 per cent in 2015 to 11.8 per cent in 2021.
Which means the Liberal government’s latest move is not backed by data that indicate it needs to escalate its anti-smoking policies to the absurd level that it did this week.
This singular zealotry might be more defensible were it evenly applied, but it’s not. The government quoted data this week that said health care costs related to tobacco use were $6.1-billion in 2017, and that those costs represented 47 per cent of all health care costs associated with substance use in Canada.
What they didn’t report from the same data was that, at $5.4-billion, health care costs related to alcohol consumption represented 42 per cent of all health care costs associated with substance use in Canada.
Those numbers are not that different. As well, deaths caused by alcohol use in Canada, while nowhere near those of tobacco, are on the rise, with marked increases during the pandemic.
How far could it go? Will we one day see government warnings etched into the bottom of every beer glass served in a bar? Cars are hazardous, too! Will the Liberals eventually require a recorded message in passenger vehicles telling drivers, “This SUV emits greenhouse gases. Have you thought about walking?”
Even if Ottawa wanted to ban tobacco use outright, it couldn’t, because prohibition would fail, as it always does. There will always be a percentage of Canadians who smoke; Ottawa is working to keep their numbers to a minimum.
Fair enough. Necessary, in fact. But once you accept the reality that ending tobacco use is impossible, then it is on government to make sure that Canadians are able to partake of that particular vice without having Big Brother shoved in their faces (again, literally).
One doesn’t have to be an off-the-grid anarcho-libertarian – or even just the kind of person who habitually decries the nanny state – to believe that Canadians have the right to enjoy their lives, vices included, free from the constant nagging of the government.
And yes, that includes smokers.
Health groups urge provinces to seek anti-smoking measures in Big Tobacco settlement