The UK should be brandishing individual cigarettes with health warning labels as part of reforms to eradicate smoking, experts have said.
It would match Canada’s move this week, a world first, to make it “virtually impossible” for smokers to ignore the dangers of smoking.
The country’s health chiefs hope that statements such as “poison in every puff” and “cigarettes cause cancer” will help curb tobacco use.
Widely welcomed by Canadian health authorities, Conservative peer Lord George Young urged the government to ‘follow the lead’.
He said: ‘I congratulate Canada for being the first to implement this sensible public health measure.
Canada announced yesterday that it will print health warning labels on individual cigarettes as a world first. The country, which takes effect Aug. 1, hopes it will help reduce tobacco use in Canada to less than 5 percent by 2035. Health Canada also believes that by April 2025, retailers in Canada will only be selling tobacco products with the new warning labels.
According to the Office for National Statistics’ latest annual population survey (blue line), one in eight adults in Britain will be a frequent user by 2021, five percent less than the previous year. Meanwhile, 4 million over-16s are now using e-cigarettes – a fifth in just 12 months (red line)
Javed Khan, a former head of a children’s charity tasked with finding ways to keep Britain on its smoke-free target, warned in August 2022 that England will miss the target by at least seven years. He proposed raising the age limit for buying cigarettes in England, currently set at 18, by 12 months each year until no one can legally buy a tobacco product.
“When I proposed it in the 1970s, it was a reasonable and proportionate response to a deadly product. This remains the case more than 40 years later.’
Last year, Lord Young also proposed that tobacco companies alternate eight different warnings on their sticks and rolling papers under the terms of the Cigarette Stick Health Warnings Bill.
The bill is currently in its second reading stage in the House of Commons, having been passed by the House of Lords.
Under rules introduced in 2016, health warnings in the picture must cover 65 per cent of the front and back of every pack of cigarettes in the UK, with additional warnings at the top.
Health Canada hopes phrases like ‘poison in every puff’ and ‘cigarettes cause cancer’ make it ‘virtually impossible’ for smokers to ignore warnings
Meanwhile, Hazel Cheeseman, deputy general manager of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), said: ‘Warnings on cigarette sticks and papers would reinforce the message to smokers about the dangers.
She added: “Especially children who are more likely to get a cigarette than adult smokers and therefore avoid the health warnings on packages.”
Canada first introduced tobacco product warning requirements in 2000 to raise awareness of the health risks and health effects of tobacco use.
Since 2011, there are up-to-date health-related messages and images for cigarettes and cigars.
The country hopes the new step – which will be introduced on August 1 – will aid in its efforts to reduce tobacco use in Canada to less than 5 percent by 2035.
Health Canada believes that by April 2025, retailers in Canada will only be selling tobacco products with the new warning labels.
In a statement, Health Canada said: “Labeling the wrapper of individual cigarettes, cigars, tubes and other tobacco products will make it virtually impossible to avoid health warnings altogether.”
According to Canada’s Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Health Minister Carolyn Bennett, tobacco use kills 48,000 Canadians each year.
The updated graphics displayed on the packaging “will be a true and surprising reminder of the health consequences of smoking,” she said.
“We will continue to do what is necessary to help more people in Canada quit smoking and help young people live healthy, tobacco-free lives,” she added.
About one in eight Britons and Americans now say they smoke cigarettes, compared with nearly half in the 1970s.
The UK government aims to reduce smoking to just five per cent by 2030, but in December Cancer Research UK predicted that the target would probably not be reached until 2039 based on current trends.
In recent months, government advisers have also called for a smoking ban on sidewalks outside cafes and restaurants.
Smoking kills around 78,000 people in the UK each year, and many more live with disease as a result of their habit, half of which is due to cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack and stroke.
It is estimated that around 500,000 hospital admissions in England each year are due to smoking and that smoking costs the economy £17 billion a year.
Of this, £2.4bn goes to the NHS, £1.19bn to the social care system, and more than £13bn is lost to productivity costs through tobacco-related lost earnings, unemployment and premature death.
The 7,000 chemicals in tobacco — including tar and others that can narrow arteries and damage blood vessels — are believed to be responsible for some of the damage smoking does to the heart.
Meanwhile, nicotine — a highly addictive toxin found in tobacco — has been strongly linked to dangerous increases in heart rate and blood pressure.
Smoking also releases toxic gases, such as carbon monoxide, which replace the oxygen in the blood, decreasing the availability of oxygen to the heart.