Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq today announced the finalization of regulations to require the new set of health warnings on packages of cigarettes and little cigars.  The warnings will increase in size from 50% to 75%.  The warnings will be required at the manufacturer/importer level as of March 21, 2012, and at the retailer level as of June 19, 2012.

The new requirements include

• A set of 16 new package health warnings, with an increase in warning size from 50 per cent to 75 per cent of the…

Ronhill Unlimited is the first interactive cigarette packaging in the world with QR code as a part of its design. Scanning the QR code takes you to a regional (ex-Yu) mobile web site where the user can find the nearest place where smoking is allowed by using the map that automatically shows his current location.

Ronhill Unlimited is a product of the SE Europe's leading tobacco manufacturer - TDR. Design and communication were made by the advertising agency Bruketa&Žinić OM and its digital…

Smokers in the Gulf oil producers could have second thoughts to continue smoking when they come face to face with grim images on the hazards of such a habit occupying most of their cigarette packages or tobacco products under a new law approved by member states this week.

The law will be enforced in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in August 2012 and it includes unified graphic warnings to be printed on all cigarette boxes and tobacco used in hookah and other smoking tools.

Images…

A federal judge peppered a government lawyer with questions Wednesday expressing doubts about whether the Food and Drug Administration can force tobacco companies to post graphic images on their cigarette packages showing the health effects of smoking.

In a two-hour hearing, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon closely questioned Justice Department lawyer Mark Stern on whether the nine graphic images proposed by the FDA convey just the facts about the health risks of smoking or go beyond that into…

If you haven't already seen the images that the Food and Drug Administration will require tobacco companies to include on cigarette packages, take a look. They're disgusting: rotting teeth and gums, blackened lungs, a patient with a Frankenstein scar running down his chest. Congress's 2009 Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the first update of cigarette warning labels since 1984, was supposed to give the FDA the power to depict the health consequences of smoking with color graphics.…

The pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs is proving effective as smokers are now facing a tough opposition from their families in continuing their smoking habit.

The picture of half-cut mouth on the cigarette pack gives a very bad feeling. Now, instead of keeping a cigarette pack in my pocket, I buy only two or three cigarettes whenever I have the urge for smoking. This way, I have cut down my daily intake of cigarettes, said Hafeez Ahmed, a teacher on Sunday.

Hafeez said he used to…

The owners of 38 outlets are to be taken to court for selling cigarette packets which did not carry pictorial health warnings, the Environmental Health Directorate said today.

It issued a statement after the GRTU filed a judial protest saying that retailers should be able to sell stocks which they had legally acquired.

The directorate explained that evidence from countries where pictorial warnings had already been introduced showed that images had a greater impact than text warnings alone.

In…