Cigarette companies may have to design new packets to enter the rich oil exporting Arab countries.

According to a proposal which the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries are in the process of finalizing, all cigarette packets must have 50 per cent of the packaging indicating statutory health warning with a mandatory font set to 14 on the surface

There are improvements in the physical and emotional health of Canadian youths, particularly on areas of bullying, smoking and couch-potato behavior. According to William Boyce of Queen's University, bullying incidents in 2006 among 9,500 Grade 6 to 10 students across the nation slightly dipped to 40 percent from 43 percent in 2002.

Boyce explained the slight drop to higher awareness in campuses and in Canadian society about the negative effects of physical, verbal, sexual and cyberspace bullying. But racial bullying had gone up a little bit, Boyce admitted

More Canadian youths are turning to unprescribed use of common medicine from serving as a party popper to other non-medical purposes. The drugs, usually filched from the family medicine box, are mixed with alcohol to produce a deadly cocktail.

Aside from the alarming rise in number of young Canadians taking common medicine such as painkillers, equally dangerous is the lack of awareness of the parents that some pills and tablets are already missing and that their children are frequent attendees to weekend parties where deadly combinations of prescription drugs and alcohol go together

While several Canadian provinces had recently passed legislation to prohibit smoking inside cars with children, the federal government had surreptitiously instructed the Canada Border Services Agency to permit Canadian children to bring imported cigarettes and other tobacco products into the country.

The Sun Media quoted a portion of the CBSA memorandum released in late 2007 that, "According to a legal opinion recently obtained by headquarters, federal and provincial laws on tobacco have no provisions to prevent the importation of tobacco products

A federal advisory panel on Wednesday recommended that all children not just those under 5 but over the age of 6 months should be vaccinated for influenza every year. However, infants younger than 6 months and those with serious egg allergies are exempted.

The recommendation, which is expected to be formally adopted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would be one of the largest expansions in flu vaccination coverage in U.S. history since the 1940s. It would include around 30 million more children eligible for vaccination, although current vaccination rates suggest that only about 7 million would actually receive the shots