The National Post, Canwest News Service, Mia Rabson, Wednesday, March 05, 2008
OTTAWA - Cigarillos that look and taste like candy are
intended to encourage children to smoke and should be
subject to all the restrictions placed on cigarettes, a New
Democrat MP says.
Judy Wasylycia-Leis plans to introduce a private member's
bill in the coming weeks that would require cigarillos to be
packaged and labelled under the same regulations as
cigarettes.
Right now they are not subject to the same warning labels
and sales restrictions, and can be sold individually.
"These are tobacco products designed specifically for
kids to attract them to the idea of smoking at a young age,"
said Ms. Wasylycia-Leis, a Winnipeg MP.
Some cigarillos are marketed with sweet-tasting
flavourings such as fruit -- or even peanut butter and
jelly.
A Health Canada study in 2007 found 12% of Canadian teens
are smoking cigarillos, but because of the way statistics
are collected on smoking, many of those youths are not
factored into smoking rates.
Smoking statistics generally count only those who say
they smoke cigarettes. Five per cent of teenagers between 15
and 19 smoke cigarillos and are therefore excluded from
smoking rate data.
Ms. Wasylycia-Leis said Canada is also in contravention
of an agreement it signed with the World Health Organization
related to smoking products.
Many of the cigarillo products are packaged in such a way
that most parents would not know what they were if they
found them in their children's belongings, she said.
Ms. Wasylycia-Leis's legislation would require cigarillos
to be packaged no less than 20 per pack, and would ban
flavourings. The bill also would require that cigarillo
packages carry a warning label covering 50% of the package
surface -- the same requirement as for cigarettes.
BRANDON, Man. - Thirty-five years ago today, Lillian White gave birth
to her youngest son. Yesterday, she knelt down and kissed his coffin
at his graveside.
Darrin White committed suicide two weeks ago in Prince George, B.C.,
after a judge ordered him to pay his estranged wife twice his take-home
pay in child support and alimony each month.
In death he has become a poignant symbol of family courts gone awry,
of a divorce system run by people with closed minds, hard hearts and
deaf ears.
More and More teens are becoming depressed. The numbers of young people
suffering from depression in the last 10 years has risen worryingly, an
expert says.
BBC, UK, August 3, 2004
Government statistics suggest one in eight adolescents now has depression.
Unless doctors recognise the problem, Read More ..uld slip through the net,
says Professor Tim Kendall of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental
Health.
Guidelines on treating childhood depression will be published next year.
Professor Kendall says a lot Read More ..eds to be done to treat the illness.
PA News, U.S.A., By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, September 28, 2003
Broken marriages, living a single life and lack of income are
the three factors chiefly to blame for a surge in suicides
among young men, a new study has shown.
Suicide rates in England and Wales have doubled for men under
45 since 1950, but declined among women and older age groups
of both sexes.
Researchers trying to discover why found that between 1950 and
1998 there were worsening trends for many suicide risk
factors.
These included marital break up, birth and marriage declines,
unemployment and substance abuse.
But those most associated with young men aged 25 to 34 were
divorce, fewer marriages, and increases in income inequality.
The National Post, The Gazette, Montreal, Lynn Moore, Monday, February 15, 1999
Women in Quebec talk Read More ..out it, but when it comes to doing it -- committing suicide -- it's men who
actually do the deed. It's a gender gap that needs explaining, say suicide prevention experts who point to
statistics that show 80% of Quebec suicides are male.
"The high rate of male suicide is becoming a pressing public heath issue," Louise Levesque, head of the
Association Quebecoise de suicidologie, said yesterday during a press conference to launch Suicide
Prevention Week.
Of the 1,351 Quebecers who committed suicide in 1997, 1,071 were male and 280 were female, said Pierre
Morin, Quebec's chief coroner, citing the most recent figures available.
Especially alarming is the high suicide rate among male "baby boomers," Mr. Morin said. Almost 2,000 men,
aged 35 to 50, committed suicide during the last five years for which statistics are available, he said.
StatsCan recently reported on a 10% increase in suicides. But StatsCan persists in ignoring the
group of Canadians at greatest risk for suicide, as do the media and professional reports.
Suicide is a microcosm for those most under stress and most at risk of unresolved crisis in society. Suicides may logically be categorized
as 100% citizens of Canada, and then as 79% male. The most critical measure of depression - suicide - is counted
overwhelmingly in male corpses. For over 23 years widespread media and professional attention concentrated on 12,500
AIDS deaths, compared to little concern with 92,000 suicides.
