If you’re a smoker, whatever brand of cigarettes you buy will soon look a little different.
New regulations passed by Health Canada makes a drab brown colour as the default colour for all tobacco brands.
Some of the new packaging has already started to pop up across the country, but the regulations don’t officially take place until Nov. 9.
After that, retailers will have a 90-day window to offload their remaining inventory.
The new measures will standardize a brown base colour, basic gray text and a minimalist layout for every brand of cigarettes.
It will also add a few new regulations regarding the size and appearance of cigarettes, cigars and other products inside the packages.
Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society, said the country’s new plain-packaging regulations are “the best in the world.”
They’ve been implemented after learning from the example of what more than a dozen other countries have already adopted in a similar measure.
Other health experts and advocates say Canada is at the forefront of the global push to curb the appeal of cigarettes, particularly among youth.
