There is a plan from the Trudeau Government that would require plain packaging for all tobacco products.
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Tobacco products would be packaged in black wrappers with large warnings advising the user that smoking kills. “Pictures warning the public of the health dangers posed by cigarettes may also be included on packets in future, along with the current verbal health warnings, said Joe Maila, spokesperson for Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi”.
Packaging of hand-rolled tobacco must also be in the same drab green colour and contain a minimum of 30g of tobacco.
On 20 May 2016, France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland each began implementation of plain packaging.
“As more countries adopt plain packaging, what was once seen as a revolutionary policy is well on its way to becoming a standard practice in national tobacco control policies worldwide”, said Matthew Myers, the group’s president, in a statement. “We have that but people’s incomes are improving so the cost of cigarettes will become cheaper in the future”, said Doctor Edgardo Ulysses N. Dorotheo, who is also program director at the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. It limits misleading packaging and labeling.
The graphic health warning law took 7 years before it hurdled Philippine Congress, and another two years to take effect. The second country to pass a plain packaging legislation was Ireland, in March 2015, and is preparing to introduce the measure, according to the World Health Organization release.
To date, Australia is the only country to have fully implemented plain packaging.
According to WHO, tobacco-related illness is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced as one person dies from a tobacco-related disease every six seconds. The 2014 Canadian Community Health Survey found that 18% of Canadians (more than 5 million people) are smokers.
Plain-packaging legislation is supported by the World Health Organization, which states the restrictions reduce the appeal of tobacco products and challenge advertising techniques that suggest some products are less harmful than competitors.
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The WHO slogan for this year is “Get ready for plain packaging”. More than 80 percent of those preventable deaths are expected to occur in developing countries.
