ITC Project

(Wednesday, 27 November 2013, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada):  A report released today at the Canadian National Conference on Tobacco or Health in Ottawa reveals that Canada, traditionally seen as a global leader in tobacco control, is at risk of stagnating or even losing ground in its efforts to reduce tobacco use.  The report, entitled “ITC Canada National Report: Findings from the Wave 1 to Wave 8 Surveys (2002-11)” was produced by the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project), centered at the University of Waterloo, as part of a large international research collaboration across 22 countries throughout the world. The ITC Canada Report summarizes the findings of the ITC Canada Survey, a 9-year cohort survey of 1500-2000 smokers and quitters across Canada, designed to evaluate the effectiveness of Canada’s tobacco control policies. 

(Monday, 25 November 2013, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; Chicago, Illinois, USA): A research paper published in the scientific journal Tobacco Control, “Cigarette graphic warning labels and smoking prevalence in Canada: a critical examination and reformulation of the FDA regulatory impact analysis”, shows that graphic warning labels on cigarette packs led to a decrease in smoking rates in Canada of between 12% and 20% from 2000 to 2009. The authors estimate that if the same model was applied to the United States, the introduction of graphic warnings would potentially lead to a decrease of between 5.3 and 8.6 million smokers.