TORONTO - Ottawa's decision to abandon plans to beef up tobacco warning labels is a senseless policy shift that could lead to increased smoking, smoking-related illnesses and deaths, says an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The editorial in this week's issue of the CMAJ calls on federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq to immediately move ahead with updated warnings on cigarettes, despite her government's announcement that the program is on hold while it focuses on cracking down on the sale of cheap contraband cigarettes.

"In late September, Health Canada abruptly announced at a closed-door meeting with provincial and territorial representatives that it was suspending plans to move forward with larger and more graphic warning labels as well as a prominently displayed toll-free number for a quit-smoking line," write CMAJ deputy editor Dr. Matthew Stanbrook and editor-in-chief Dr. Paul Hebert.

"The Harper government's sudden policy shift is ill-conceived," they continue. "At a minimum, the shift is wasting years of work and taxpayer dollars ... Certainly, the problem of contraband must be addressed. However, there is no obvious reason why fighting contraband should stop the government from proceeding with new warning labels that have already been developed and extensively researched."

Hebert, in a phone interview Monday from Ottawa, said there is scientific evidence that warning labels on cigarette packages help reduce smoking rates.

"The first thing is they're dose-intensive -- the more you smoke, the more you see," he said. "They dose the people who need it the most, which is a huge advantage."

In their editorial, Hebert and Stanbrook say warning labels make smokers more likely to read messages about adverse consequences of tobacco use and about quitting, "to forgo a cigarette they were about to smoke, and to try to avoid seeing the labels."

"These cognitive and behavioural effects are in turn associated with increased rates of quitting smoking ... Perhaps most important, warning labels effectively deter non-smokers from starting to smoke and are a key medium for such messages for vulnerable children and youth."

But the warnings on Canadian cigarettes, which carry photos ranging from a set of teeth surrounded by cancer-blackened gums to a milder view of a pregnant woman, have not been altered in 10 years and have lost much of their impact, he said.

They need to be refreshed, Hebert stressed. "Otherwise, they become like wallpaper."

For the last six years, Health Canada had been looking into redesigning warning labels and increasing their size to 90 per cent of package fronts and backs from the current 50 per cent. The department was also considering whether to illustrate warnings with more disturbing photos to see if they would better deter smokers from lighting up. One heart-rending photo being evaluated showed dying lung cancer patient Barb Tarbox of Alberta, who spent her final months warning Canadians about the hazards of smoking.

Hebert said no explanation was given for the government's abrupt change of direction. "I don't know why they suspended the program. None of us do."

Aglukkaq was not available for comment Monday. However, a spokeswoman for the minister said by email that "Health Canada continues to examine the renewal of health warning messages on tobacco packaging, but is not ready to move forward at this time."

Geoffrey Fong, a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo who specializes in tobacco-control issues, calls that decision "unwise."

A decade ago, Canada led the world when it introduced hard-hitting graphic warnings on cigarettes, said Fong, who is also a senior investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

"Canada's warning labels were an inspiration to many countries throughout the world that wanted to have better warning labels, more effective warning labels," he said, noting that, since then, more than 40 countries have implemented or are in the process of implementing similar programs.

"Some countries like Uruguay and Brazil have gone through multiple rounds of revisions of their own graphic warning labels," he said. Meanwhile, Canada's labelling on tobacco products has remained unchanged.

"We really should think about warning labels on cigarette packs as a potentially extremely powerful opportunity to educate and inform people about the harms of the product -- a product that kills one-third to one-half of its regular users."