Canadian smokers support bold new approaches to end tobacco use
Most Canadian smokers are in favour of novel policies to reduce tobacco use, according to a national survey by the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC) at the University of Waterloo.
Responding to the Canadian government’s commitment to reduce tobacco use to less than five per cent of the population by 2035, the ITC study assessed baseline levels of support among Canadian smokers for potential endgame policies. The researchers found that most smokers in Canada support new and radical tobacco endgame strategies.
“Canada has taken strong actions to reduce tobacco use over the last several decades. Anti-smoking policies such as graphic warning labels on cigarette packs, smoking bans, tobacco taxes, and bans on the display of tobacco products have driven smoking rates down to an all-time low,” said Geoffrey Fong, Principal Investigator of the ITC Project and a professor of psychology and public health and health systems at Waterloo. “However, the decrease has levelled off in recent years, and 16 per cent of Canada’s population (roughly five million people) continue to smoke—killing 45,000 smokers each year.”
The survey of 3,215 smokers, conducted in 2016, found that 70 per cent support lowering nicotine levels in cigarettes to make them less addictive and raising the legal age for buying cigarettes to 21+ years. More than half (59%) of smokers support a ban on all marketing of tobacco products. Even the most radical policy proposed in the survey—a complete ban on the sale of cigarettes within 10 years, with smoking cessation support—is favoured by 44 per cent of smokers.
On May 31, 2018, the Canadian government released a new federal tobacco control strategy to achieve a tobacco endgame target of less than five per cent tobacco use by 2035—or less than 1.8 million tobacco users. The study findings support the kind of new leading-edge policies needed to curb tobacco use in Canada and refutes typical tobacco industry claims that endgame policies will result in public backlash because they interfere with smokers’ rights.
Source: Read Full Article
