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Cigarette packs are about to get a whole lot more jarring in Canada. Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, accompanied by the widower and daughter of antismoking crusader Barb Tarbox,burberry outlet visited a school in Ottawa on Tuesday to announce that tobacco companies will have to start selling revamped cigarette packages by next June. Twelve new images will cover 75 per cent of the outside panel of cigarette packages and eight new health messages will appear on the inside in full colour in an attempt to turn off smokers. A picture of a dying Barb Tarbox, a lifelong smoker who died of lung cancer in 2003 at age 42, will be among the new images on the outside panels. "This is one story of many in Canada, and the family agreed to help and work with us to get their message to Canadians, and I thank them for their courage and their leadership in trying to reach out to young people," the health minister said Tuesday. Speaking directly to the Grade 8 students on hand for the announcement, Pat Tarbox said the picture of his late wife is still shocking for their family to see and "it freaks out a lot people." That's the point, he said. "We're hoping her image will have an impact on a lot of youth and that's really what Barb wanted to do," said Tarbox, whose late wife documented her illness and spoke to schools across the country in the months before her death as part of an antismoking campaign. "It's a stark reality of what cancer looks like. If you think smoking is cool, 20 years down the road, you don't look so cool when you're lying in a hospital bed deteriorating," added Tarbox. Their daughter, Mackenzie, 18, who was nine years old when her mother died and is now a first-year university student, said the image of her mother represents "just what it means to have cancer. I just think that you guys should just never start and if you have, stop." Currently, health warnings cover 50 per cent of the outside panel of cigarette packages, but Health Canada research has consistently shown that smokers have dulled to the old graphics, first introduced in 2001. As part of the new rules, tobacco companies will also have to include four toxicemission messages for the side panel, along with a national toll-free quit line. Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst for the Canadian Cancer Society, was on hand to laud the government for showing "global leadership." He added: "This is a blockbuster in terms of public health because it costs the government virtually nothing to do but it does have an impact in the short and long term."
