Canadian tobacco companies are now required by law to include more visual health warnings on their packages. After an extensive regulatory process, the Tobacco Products Information Regulations registered the law on June 26, 2000, calling for cigarette brands with a 2 percent or more market share to include warnings on their cigarette packages, cigarette tobacco, tobacco sticks, kreteks, and leaf tobacco no later than December 23, 2000. Brands with less than a 2 percent market share are required to include warning messages on their products by June 26, 2001.

“Canada’s new warnings are world-precedent setting,” says Ken Kyle, director of Public Issues for the Canadian Cancer Society.

The new warning system means that rotated picture-based messages now appear in the top 50 percent of the front and back of cigarette packages-English on one side and French on the other-with another rotated message on the inside of the package. 

Picture-based messages will also be required for cigars and pipe tobacco. Text-based messages will be required for chewing tobacco, snuff and bidis.

“It’s about time that we put the size of the health warning message with the size of the problem,” says Stoy Proctor, associate health director for the Seventh-day Adventist Church worldwide. The Adventist Church has been an advocate against the use of tobacco products since the church’s organization in the mid-1800s.