Canada - health groups want similar action like Australia..

May 3, 2010 -


Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, says the move by Australia will hopefully blaze the trail for other countries, including Canada, to consider similar action.

Canadian health groups are calling on this country to follow suit after Australia announced it will force tobacco companies to use plain packaging with no logos or colours on its products. (Australia - tobacco tax increase now in force, next comes plain tobacco packaging..; Australia - plain packages on all tobacco products within 2-years..)

The move by the Australian government - aimed at reducing the amount of smokers and smoking-related deaths, and is to take effect in January 2012 - will see only health warnings displayed on cigarette packaging, with some prototypes displaying scenes of blackened lungs and teeth over the full surface area.

Callard: "It took a decade to get standard advertising out of the way." Yesterday after her group and the Non-Smokers' Rights Association issued a joint news release urging a change in Canada. "First came the television ads in the 1970s, but the billboards were only taken down in Canada between 2001 and 2003 ... and then the removal of tobacco packaging displays in retail stores in the last couple of years.

We all wait on the Finland - the government is finalizing tobacco control measures that will end the consumption of tobacco products by 2040..

Reference: Repackage cigarettes, groups say, Canwest News Service, The Montreal Gazette, 4/30/2010.