Canada is set to become the first country to enforce health warning labels on individual cigarettes as a measure to encourage its citizens to quit smoking. The Mental Health and Addictions Minister Carolyn Bennett made the announcement about the new regulation, which will go into effect on August 1. The labeling requirement will cover the tipping paper of individual cigarettes, making it difficult for users to avoid the warning messages altogether. It will be implemented in stages, with most measures in the Canadian market by the end of 2023, and the rest expected by April 2024. The health-warning labels on cigarettes will feature messages such as “Cigarettes damage your organs,” and will also apply to little cigars and tubes. The regulation supports the federal Tobacco Strategy’s objective of decreasing tobacco use to less than 5% nationwide by 2035. Canada previously mandated pictorial health warnings on cigarette packages in 2001, and updated the requirements in 2012 with larger warning labels. The current initiative is part of several other new measures related to tobacco products, including extending the requirement for health-related messaging to all tobacco product packages and periodic rotation of the warning labels.