An image of Barb Tarbox, a Canadian model who became an anti-smoking activist before her death from lung cancer, could figure prominently in a cigarette warning label campaign for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (FDA)

Health Canada's recently scrapped plan to strengthen the warning labels on cigarette packages included targeting youth, binge and pregnant smokers, according to documents obtained by CBC News.

In a briefing note CBC News obtained through the Access-to-Information act, the department sets out its strategy in great detail, complete with who will be targeted and what the messages would be.

Under the heading "Levels of dependency," the note says in part: "A highly addicted smoker smokes more than 25 cigarettes a day, ranking the first cigarette of the day as the most important, and will smoke within 30 minutes of waking up."

Key "specific messages" in the draft note are that "cigarette smoking is highly addictive" and "tobacco use is highly addictive."

As for the target audience, the department aimed at concentrating on youth smokers (aged 15 to 19), potential smokers (12 to 14), binge smokers, and "pregnant smokers and those female smokers contemplating pregnancy."

The briefing notes also include reference to a draft report called "Creative Concept Testing for Health Warning Messages" that a company called Corporate Research Associates Inc. prepared for Health Canada. However, the content of that report was excluded from the document.

Health-care advocates, who had long pushed for beefed-up warning labels, were taken by surprise when Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq reversed course. Her department had spent years consulting — the internal briefing note was from 2005 — on the warning-labels file and spent millions of dollars.

Costly exercise

CBC News reported Tuesday that the federal government spent six years and nearly $4 million developing new health warnings on cigarette packages before deciding to abandon them.

Aglukkaq has decided to shift her department's emphasis to battling cigarette smuggling. To the consternation of her critics, the minister has not explained the reason for the decision.

Health Canada's U.S. counterpart, the Food and Drug Administration, plans to beef up cigarette package warning labels and, in an ironic twist, the image of a Canadian could figure prominently in the new American campaign.

Barb Tarbox, a Canadian model turned anti-smoking advocate, led a highly publicized anti-smoking campaign before dying of lung cancer in 2003 at the age of 42, leaving behind her husband and young daughter.

A picture of Tarbox, emaciated and dying on a hospital bed beside a warning that reads: "WARNING: Cigarettes cause cancer," made it to a shortlist of images that could become part of warning packages in the U.S.

One of Tarbox's last requests was that her image be part of a warning label.

A CBC News investigation also reveals that in several cases, lobbyists hired by tobacco companies have close ties to the Conservatives.

In addition, Perrin Beatty, a former Conservative health minister who in the early 1990s made Canada a world leader on cigarette warning labels, registered as a lobbyist for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

Beatty told CBC News he never personally lobbied on the file, but his organization spoke with officials in Ottawa to oppose the plan to increase the size of warning labels to 75 per cent from 50 per cent.

If you have information about Health Canada's scrapped cigarette warning label initiative, please feel free to contact me at david_mckie@cbc.ca.