This week is National Non-Smoking Week, and today is Weedless Wednesday.
To mark the occasion, Ontario has issued a "Top 10" achievements of its Smoke-Free Ontario Strategy:
- Banning smoking in all enclosed public places and all enclosed work places in May 2006.
- Restricting the retail promotion of tobacco products in May 2006 and imposing a ban on the display of tobacco products in May 2008.
- Banning smoking in motor vehicles with passengers under the age of 16 in January 2009.
- Introducing prohibitions on the sale of flavoured cigarillos and establishing regulations for cigarillo packaging in July 2010.
- Introducing stronger controls over all types of raw leaf tobacco grown in or imported into Ontario in June 2011.
- Banning smoking on and around children's playgrounds and publicly owned sports fields and surfaces as of January 1, 2015.
- Banning smoking on bar and restaurant patios as of January 1, 2015.
- Banning the sale of tobacco on university and college campuses as of January 1, 2015.
- Introducing legislation that, if passed, would limit the use and sale of e-cigarettes, including banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors.
- Introducing legislation that, if passed, would ban the sale of flavoured tobacco products.
Over 13,000 Ontarians still die each year as a result of tobacco-related diseases.
Tobacco-related disease costs Ontario’s health care system an estimated $2.2 billion in direct health care costs and an additional $5.3 billion in indirect costs such as lost productivity each year, according to 2011 data.
Ontario's smoking rate fell from 24.5 per cent in 2000 to 18.1 per cent in 2013, representing 332,361 fewer smokers.
One in four Ontario high school smokers have smoked menthol cigarettes in the last 30 days, according to Canada’s 2012/13 Youth Smoking Survey.
