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Canada is great at terrifying smokers, but Australia is better

Those graphic warnings you see plastered on Canadian cigarette packages were celebrated on Wednesday for being the fourth-largest, and therefore presumably the fourth-best, of their kind in the world.

The Canadian Cancer Society announced that the large, graphic images of rotting teeth and sick children placed them among the most prevalent of the 198 countries that require some sort of health warnings on their packaging.

Rob Cunningham, Canadian Cancer Society senior policy analyst, celebrated the ranking and went on to say that while the Canadian government's anti-smoking advocacy has improved, it should continue working to catch Australia.

Such is Canada's lot. Always striving to be Australia.

That country is considered the Muhammad Ali of using graphic images to advocate against smoking. Currently, 82.5 per cent of every cigarette package in Australia is covered with warning labels and graphic images depicting the health dangers of cigarettes.

[ Related: Researches debate a license to smoke cigarettes ]

In Canada, 75 per cent of the package's front and back are covered in warnings. That leaves 25 per cent of the package silently urging its possessor to light up.

Percentage of graphic warnings on cigarette packages:

  1. 82.5% Australia (75% of front, 90% of back)

  2. 80% Uruguay (80%, 80%)

  3. 80% Sri Lanka (80%, 80%)

  4. 75% Canada (75%, 75%)

  5. 75% Brunei (75%, 75%)

Not only that, the Australian government recently passed a law to make it illegal for cigarette companies to have their own logo on the package. The BBC reports that the law was upheld against appeal earlier this year.

On Wednesday, a leading anti-smoking advocate urged Australia to take their campaign even further, launching a bid to force smokers to register for permits.

The Australian reports that the swipe-card licences could restrict the number of cigarettes one person can purchase, which sounds suspiciously like how jailhouse "cigarette economies" are created.

The registry would also create a database that could be used to send targeted anti-smoking messages, include graphic health videos, directly to smokers.

This is all peachy. It has been more than a decade since Canada first introduced graphic images on its cigarette packaging and by all accounts it has had an impact.

New research from the University of South Carolina found that graphic images on cigarette packages are more successful at getting the message to consumers than other forms of advocacy.

But now that Canada's anti-smoking campaign is among the world's best, how much farther should we go?

[ More Brew: StatsCan scraps the annual Canada Year Book ]

Maybe all the addictive chemicals are keeping people from quitting smoking, or maybe it's simply that people tend to think they are immortal until they are not.

But what definitely is not is the reason is awareness. Smokers now know smoking is bad, everyone has seen those images.

We can keep trying to scare smokers and force them to seek out licences, and we can spam them with emails about the health concerns and chase them down the street with pamphlets filled with the latest statistics.

But how far can we chase them? And if we haven't caught them all yet, why do we think we ever will? They're smokers, you'd think they would have run out of breath by now.