Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Bramalea—Gore—Malton.
Today I rise to speak to Bill C-32, for a cause that is near and dear to me, both as a former health professor but also as a coach and judge, namely, reducing tobacco use among Canadians and particularly among our youth. Today, over 125 countries grow tobacco on four million hectares of land. The global crop is worth about $220 billion per year, with five trillion cigarettes rolling off the assembly lines annually.
Not surprisingly, tobacco consumption is increasing and it may kill over eight million people a year by 2020 in the absence of drastic controls. Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, 60 of them known or suspected carcinogens, such as arsenic, DDT and methanol. Adults who smoke risk heart disease, lung cancer, nasal sinus cancer and respiratory disease. Even light smokers risk their health. For example, a 2005 British Medical Journal study showed that smoking only one to four cigarettes per day was associated with a significantly higher risk of dying from heart disease.
Studies show substantially higher levels of lung cancer among people who work in bars, restaurants and other smoke-filled environments. Exposure to second-hand smoke also increases the risk of breast cancer, cervical cancer, miscarriage and stroke. Children who are exposed to second-hand smoke are at an increased risk of asthma induction and exacerbation, bronchitis, low birth weight, pneumonia and sudden infant death syndrome. Over 1,000 and possibly as many as 7,800 Canadians are thought to die from second-hand smoke each year.
Most smokers begin smoking in childhood or early adolescence. Ninety per cent smoke before the age of 18. Early starters are more likely to become addicted daily smokers. Partly because the tobacco industry targets adolescents, 82,000 to 99,000 young people start smoking every day. Gro Harlem Brundtland, then director-general of the World Health Organization, angrily spoke out:
That is no freedom of choice! Civilized nations protect their people under 18--they don't let them play around with a product which statistically kills one out of two of its permanent users.
Fifty per cent of young people who continue to smoke will die from tobacco related causes. Smoking causes 90% of lung cancers and 75% of bronchitis and emphysema. On average, tobacco kills 560 people every hour, 13,000 per day or 4.9 million per year. The World Health Organization reports that not a single country fully implements all key tobacco control measures. As a result, the World Health Organization outlines six MPOWER strategies that governments can adopt to prevent tens of millions of premature smoking deaths by the middle of this century.
The six MPOWER strategies are: monitor tobacco use and prevention policies; protect people from tobacco smoke; offer help to quit tobacco use; warn about the dangers of tobacco; enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; and raise taxes on tobacco. In Canada, between 63% and 79% of the price of a package of cigarettes is tax. In comparison, the tax on cigarettes in New York is 38%. Unfortunately, governments around the world collect 500 times more money in tobacco taxes each year than they spend on anti-tobacco efforts.
The Canadian government has initiated many programs to try to lower rates of smoking in Canada. These include: encouraging Canadians to support smoke-free living; increasing product pricing through taxation; informing Canadians about the health effects of smoking and second-hand smoke; providing programs to support those who choose to quit smoking; reducing access to tobacco products by minors; and restricting tobacco product advertising and promotion.
Tobacco is a communicated disease, communicated through advertising which appeals to the psychological needs of adolescents, and sponsorship.
Many of Canada's leading cigarette brands are now sold in packs that imitate BlackBerries, cell phones and mp3 players. Making tobacco products look like everyday objects minimizes the harm associated with tobacco use and makes them socially desirable and trendy.
A 2002 study showed that tobacco companies use cigarette packaging as an integral component of marketing strategy and a vehicle for creating significant in-store presence and communicating brand image. Market testing results indicate that such imagery is so strong as to influence smokers' taste ratings of the same cigarettes when packaged differently.
I am pleased to support this bill and am encouraged that it is receiving strong support from anti-smoking and health groups. Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society, said, “We are hopeful that MPs will adopt this bill quickly. It is a very important gain for us”.
The bill bans flavoured cigarettes and cigarillos. One-third of youth and close to half of all young adults have tried cigarillos with flavours such as chocolate mint, peach, strawberry and vanilla. These products have as much or more nicotine as cigarettes, and are just as likely to trap young people into a deadly smoking addiction. They are also the fastest growing tobacco product on the Canadian market, with 53 million sold in 2001 and 400 million in 2007.
The bill will also ban tobacco companies from advertising in print publications, repealing an exception that currently allows advertising in publications with an adult readership of at least 85%.
If the bill is passed, the revised Tobacco Act would leave tobacco companies with only two possible ways to advertise: on signs in places where minors are prohibited and in publications that are delivered by mail to an adult.
It is my hope that the time has to come for sustained funding and political support. A recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health examined state tobacco prevention and cessation funding levels from 1995 to 2003 and found that the more states spent on these programs, the larger the declines they achieved in adult smoking. The researchers also calculated that if every state had funded its program at the levels recommended by the Centers for Disease Control during the period, there would have been between two million and seven million fewer smokers in the United States.
It is also my hope that the government will engage high level opinion leaders and high profile champions to help achieve the significant health and economic benefits of a reduction in tobacco use.
We must be vigilant in identifying and raising awareness about all new forms of tobacco products which industry continues to develop.
We must recognize that the tobacco industry obstructs effective tobacco control measures and continues to promote tobacco products through all possible means, including the entertainment industry, as traditional marketing is becoming more and more limited due to the ratification by 164 countries of the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Considerable research has suggested that youth are influenced to smoke by positive smoking portrayals in the movies, with celebrities serving as role models. A recent study in fact suggests that exposure to smoking portrayals in the media may be very important in prompting initiation among adolescents, whereas tobacco marketing may exert a specific influence on their progression to established smoking.
What steps will the government take to snuff out contraband tobacco, which accounts for 49% of cigarettes smoked in Canada, menthol cigarettes and smokeless tobacco?
Finally, when the next product emerges, and it will, let us take immediate steps to snuff it out.