Smoking Rates in Canada, Secodhand Smoking

If there weren't already compelling enough reasons for you to quit smoking, think about the risk to your vision. While it's well-known that smoking can cause cancer, heart disease and stroke, up until recently there has been little awareness about the fact that smoking can also cause serious and permanent vision loss. Cigarette packaging in other countries - like Australia, for example - has carried the message "smoking causes blindness" for some time. Now, Canada will finally follow suit. New Health Canada regulations for tobacco products labelling mean that, as of June 19, retailers can only legally sell cigarettes that display new health warnings, including the fact that smoking increases your risk of blindness. We've known for some time that primary and secondhand smoke from cigarettes is a major risk factor for some of the most common eye diseases. According to Health Canada's 2010 Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey, Saskatchewan has one of the highest cigarette smoking-prevalence rates in Canada. I sincerely hope those people who are still smoking will heed the new warnings. Living with vision loss can be life-altering. Clinical depression is three times as common in people with vision loss compared to the general population. And seniors with vision loss face twice the risk of falls and four times the hip fractures. So, if the well-known risks associated with smoking aren't enough to make you quit, think about the implications of losing your sight.