World’s First Plain Tobacco Packaging Laws Passed by Australian Parliament

(Bloomberg) Australia is poised to become the first nation to require tobacco products to be sold in plain packages, a move that could see other countries follow suit and crimp earnings of companies like British American Tobacco Plc.

The laws, passed by the lower house yesterday and due in the Senate in September, will ban logos and color variations on cigarette packages. Packets will have to be olive green and carry health warnings within six months from Jan 1, 2012.

“Other countries will follow,” said Anne Jackson, chief executive of Ash Australia, a non-profit lobby group funded by Cancer Council Australia and the Heart Foundation. “This is a light shining the way for others to do the same and many countries are already considering it.”

Health Minister Nicola Roxon announced the move last April, along with a 25 percent tobacco tax increase and a A$85 million (A$89 million) advertising campaign to combat smoking, which the government says kills 15,000 Australians each year. Companies have since introduced their own advertising campaigns and legal actions against the move. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-24/australia-s-lower-house-passes-plain-tobacco-packaging-laws.html

Too hard to know for sure, but the article certainly suggests so.

Perhaps the end result will be that the stuff comes in a green wrapper, you peel off the wrapper and there's the box with the logo on it...kinda counterproductive, but whatever.

They kept two packs of cigarettes on a table. One with that design and the other all white. No words, just the color variation. Both packs contained exactly the same type of cigarettes. They asked people to sample one of each and say which they preferred and by a wide margin, the pack with the color on it won. They sort of wasted their time. That's the logical result. If they REALLY wanted to test the design, the other package should have had a DIFFERENT design.