Thank you very much for the question.
You mentioned both bills. I'll speak particularly to the tobacco bill that you mentioned and that we had worked very hard on.
We believe this bill is a very important bill in our continued emphasis to try to reduce smoking rates in Canada, and particularly to reduce the number of young people who start to smoke; we know, of course, that this is a very critical time in terms of prevention, and preventing a lifetime of smoking is quite helpful.
As of April 6, 2010, the amendments to the Tobacco Act require little cigars and blunt wraps to be sold in packages of at least 20 units. That is designed to make these packages less affordable and accessible to children and youth. We had known that they were beginning to be packaged in smaller and smaller packages, which made them more accessible. They were not caught by the previous act, which focused on cigarette packaging. This actually took that same principle that has applied to cigarettes since 1994 and extended it to the little cigars and the blunt wraps. That came into effect as of April 6.
As of July 5 of this year, so just a few weeks hence, retailers will no longer be able to sell cigarettes, little cigars, or blunt wraps that contain additives or flavourings. I think the committee will recall from its deliberations that there were products that were beginning to be sold that had chocolate or bubble gum flavourings. These were clearly something that young people might have found more attractive. That will be prohibited as these sections of the act come into force on July 5.
Industry has had some time to adjust to the legislation and regulations. Those have been known. We've had some time within Health Canada, in terms of our inspectorate, for gearing up our monitoring and compliance activities to make sure that we're enforcing the April 6 changes that have come into effect and that we're geared up and ready to enforce the upcoming change in early July.