[Intl-tobacco] Canada: Tobacco firms want to delay bigger warnings on cigarette packages (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Tobacco firms want to delay bigger warnings on cigarette packages
Source: CNEWS, Monday, 9/11/00

MONTREAL (CP) -- Canada's major tobacco companies asked a judge Monday for
more time to meet federal requirements for larger health warnings on
cigarette packages.

=A0Lawyers for the firms told Justice Danielle Grenier of Quebec Superior
Court they can't meet a Dec. 23 deadline for the bigger warnings to begin
appearing on all major brands. They want the deadline extended to March or
April 2001.

=A0"It's clear that it costs a lot of money to change all these packages,"
said Simon Potter, counsel for Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd.

=A0The warnings now take up more than one-third of the package. Under the
new rules, the bigger warnings will take up about half the package. They
will have a more detailed text as well as colour photos of damaged body
parts -- a diseased mouth, a cancerous lung or a brain after a stroke.

=A0Imperial Tobacco, JTI-Macdonald Corp. and a third firm, Rothmans, Benson
and Hedges Inc., say the law infringes on freedom to display their
trademark logos and colours.

=A0Potter argued the regulations aren't written clearly enough and delaying
the changes "will cause no harm" to the public.

=A0He asked the judge to postpone the deadline for warnings by three or fou=
r
months. By that time, Grenier is to start hearing the main case: the
tobacco firms' attack on the constitutionality of the law adopted by the
House of Commons last June.

=A0Once Grenier has begun tackling the complex constitutionality question,
further delays would be likely in getting the larger warnings on the
packages.

=A0The tobacco firms also argue that Ottawa hasn't produced any credible
evidence the warnings will reduce smoking.

=A0Those arguments are disputed by lawyers for the federal government and
for other organizations including the Canadian Cancer Society and the
Non-Smokers' Rights Association.

=A0Garfield Mahood, executive director of the non-smoking association, said
he rejects the tobacco industry's contention that there's no cause and
effect between advertising and cigarette sales.

=A0Mahood said the industry still refuses to acknowledge its products have
ever "caused any death or disease."

=A0"The most that they'll concede is that there's a statistical
relationship," he said in an interview outside court.

=A0Mahood said the cigarette package is the tobacco industry's main
marketing tool so the regulations will have "an enormous, positive, public
health impact."

=A0The Canadian Cancer Society said the bigger warnings have the
overwhelming support of Canada's public health community.

=A0"Tobacco products are the leading preventable cause of disease,
disability and death in Canada," the society said in an affidavit filed in
court.

=A0The cancer society that every year, an estimated 45,000 Canadians die
from tobacco products and the warnings are effective.

=A0Potter dismissed a government-commissioned study that claimed such
advertising reduces smoking.

=A0He argued the study is ill-founded, based on situations in Turkey and
Australia that aren't comparable with Canada. Potter said the health
warnings that have been displayed on packages in Canada since 1994 have
not in fact discouraged young people.

=A0"I don't say it's cause and effect, but ever since the government starte=
d
its warnings and regulations, youth smoking has gone up," Potter said.