Wednesday 8 July 1998 Smoke labels getting deadly - National News - The Ottawa Citizen Online

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Wednesday 8 July 1998

Smoke labels getting deadly

Officials consider stamping cigarette packs with death's head

Chris Cobb
The Ottawa Citizen

The Ottawa Citizen / Health Canada officials believe current warning messages may have outlived their effectiveness.

Federal health bureaucrats may force tobacco companies to stamp skull-and-crossbones poison warnings on cigarette packages.

The symbol, common on all poisonous household products such as bleach and Draino, is one of a series of new warnings being considered by federal health officials as part of an overhaul of cigarette packaging. Officials feel the warnings Canadian smokers have been reading for several years may have outlived their effectiveness.

Although current health warnings are worded by Health Canada, they are placed on packages voluntarily by the tobacco industry.

Under last year's Tobacco Act, however, the federal government gave itself power to order tobacco companies to change packaging, which they consider to be the prime method of communicating to smokers.

Murray Kaiserman, Health Canada's co-ordinator of research at the department's office of tobacco control, says some changes are being considered to tobacco warnings and introduction of the skull and crossbones symbol is "on the table."

Health warnings have been effective, he said, but some of the more familiar ones need to be changed and replaced with more information about poisonous additives.

"Our research shows that smokers look at the health messages on packaging at least twice a day," said Mr. Kaiserman. "We have had great success with the messages because they are a constant reminder, which is important. The challenge is to avoid these message wearing out."

Mr. Kaiserman concedes that all cigarette smokers now understand that smoking is bad for their health but research shows that many are still vague on specifics. "The next step is to add a little more information," he said.

The tobacco industry is now under pressure from the federal government to produce lists of toxic ingredients found in its products -- including papers and filters.

The British Columbia government is expected to go even further when it introduces legislation later this summer requiring tobacco companies to disclose, as early as this fall, lists of additives and ingredients.

The tobacco industry is not happy with possible changes to health warnings or the demands to list toxic ingredients, many of which, they say, occur naturally in tobacco and are virtually impossible to measure.

Marie-Josee Lapointe, spokeswoman for the Tobacco Manufacturers Association, says putting poison warnings on cigarette packs could backfire because it could encourage youngsters to smoke rather than deter them. A similar experiment in Britain, she said, made the cigarettes "the hottest thing in town" among youngsters.

"There is only so much you can do to scare people off," she said. "We see it as ill-advised. People smoke knowing the dangers, which suggests the warnings are not effective. The key is better education and getting to kids before they start to smoke."

Changes to cigarette packages cost the industry millions of dollars, added Ms. Lapointe, and if government tries to force the industry to devote the exterior of packs to health warnings and the listing of toxic contents, it will also become a legal issue over the prominence of their brand name.

"There has to be warnings and the industry agrees with that," she added. "But does it mean the whole pack has to be a warning? There is a point where enough is enough. Some things are reasonable, some things are not."

Ms. Lapointe added that if provinces such as British Columbia are going to make demands on the tobacco industry, the federal government and the provinces need to "harmonize" their positions.

The anti-smoking lobby has been advocating tougher health warnings on cigarettes packaging for several years and wants government to go even further than poison symbols and introduce packaging with dramatic photographs of such images as cancerous lungs and lips.

Health Canada has done excellent research, said Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, but the federal government has been reluctant to introduce tougher anti-smoking measures.

"It would surprise me to see the government introduce skull and crossbones on packaging, said Ms. Callard, "but it would be a good sign that they had stopped playing ball with the tobacco industry.

"Canadians smoke 56 billion cigarettes a year," she added, "which makes the package the perfect advertising vehicle to get to smokers.