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Australia Restricts Company Logos on Cigarette Packs

By CHRISTINE HAUSER

ABC News of Australia coverage included an ad about children reacting to cigarette packs

Australia's highest court upheld a law on Wednesday that prohibits tobacco companies from using their logos on cigarette packets, a decision that means smokers could see more of the graphic images associated with their habit: blistered, cancer-stricken mouths; children sick from secondhand smoke, and gangrenous limbs.

In a brief statement, the High Court of Australia rejected a challenge by tobacco companies to the country's Tobacco Plain Packaging Act, adding that it would publish its reasons at a later date. But the decision curtails tobacco companies' use of their logos and brand names.

As my colleague Matt Siegel wrote , British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Philip Morris Australia had argued that the new ban on brand logos would infringe on t heir intellectual property rights. The court rejected that argument.

The outcome of the case had potential global ramifications because it could set a precedent for other countries seeking to introduce harsher labeling requirements for tobacco products, he wrote.

The decision was both cheered and criticized in social media circles and on Web sites.


Tobacco companies said the plain-packaging regulations would make it easier for smuggling or counterfeit trade in cigarettes and said the legislation's sponsors offered no evidence that the rules would he lp people quit. Imperial Tobacco said in a statement on its Web site:

“The illegal tobacco trade is a significant problem in Australia and we expect the situation to worsen considerably as a result of this legislation, placing further pressures on retailers and government tax revenues.

“Tobacco packaging has never been identified as a reason why people start, or continue, to smoke, and there is no credible evidence to support the notion that plain packs will reduce smoking levels.

In Australia, cigarette packs already come with graphic depictions of the effects of smoking-related diseases, but the new rules go further. Brand logos and colorful designs will be banned, with only a small space remaining where the brand name and variant of the cigarette can be printed, Mr. Siegel wrote. Packages will be required to be a uniform shade of olive green.

Australia's minister of health, Tanya Plibersek, said on her Twitter account and in a joint statement with Nicola Roxon, the attorney general, that it was a victory for anyone who had lost someone to a smoking-related illness.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation posted video from a news conference given by Ms. Plibersek and Ms. Roxon at which they played an advertisement produced in the United Kingdom and featuring children responding to brightly colored cigarette packets. One little girl delighted in the pretty pink ones.

While Australia has the widest ranging laws in the world on tobacco packaging, other countries have joined efforts to curtail the company brands and emphasize photographs aimed at discouraging people from smoking. In Dubai this month, graphic images on cigarette packs and on packages of loose tob acco used for water pipes appeared in stores, the Dubai-based newspaper, Gulf News, reported.

Critics questioned whether the Australian court's decision would mean that other countries would follow, and some rallied in defense of the habit, posting on #plainpacks and #handsoffourpacks on Twitter.

The group called Hands Off Our Packs said last week it had accumulated hundreds of thousands of signatures of smokers on a petition opposing “excessive regulation” and “nanny state” moves of the government in working for plain packaging of cigarette brands.

In the United States, efforts to regulate the cigarette packages and advertising have also gone through the courts. A provision to a 2009 act directed the Food and Drug Administration to require larger, graphic warning labe ls covering the top half of the front and back of cigarette packs by Sept. 22, 2012, as well as 20 percent of print advertising for cigarettes.

The photos the F.D.A. selected for the labels, such as a man breathing smoke out of a tracheotomy hole in his neck, are similar to some on cigarette packaging in Canada, my colleague, Stephanie Strom, wrote in February. But a federal judge later declared the requirement unconstitutional.