Australia has released draft regulations for new pictorial health warnings to be implemented in 2012. The draft regulations proposed two sets of seven health warnings for cigarette packages and five health warnings for cigar packages. The warnings would be required to cover 75% of the front and 90% of the back of cigarette packages. The proposal features warnings for blindness, death, lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, kidney and bladder cancer, gangrene, emphysema, gum and tooth damage,…

A federal judge on Monday blocked a Food and Drug Administration requirement that tobacco companies put big new graphic warning labels on cigarette packages by next September.

 In a preliminary injunction, Judge Richard J. Leon of United States District Court in Washington ruled that cigarette makers were likely to win a free speech challenge against the proposed labels, which include staged photos of a corpse and of a man breathing smoke out of a tracheotomy hole in his neck.

 The judge…

Labor's legislation on plain packaging of cigarettes is set to pass parliament next week, but tobacco products won't be sold in olive-brown packages until the end of 2012 - five months later than originally planned.

The federal government says it will ram the draft laws through the Senate next Thursday with a "limited" debate followed by a vote.

The coalition supports the main plain packaging legislation but not an associated trademarks bill.

However, both will pass the Senate with the…

The UAE Cabinet yesterday approved warnings on cigarette packets with a graphic picture covering about half of the packet.

 It also bans tobacco companies from using "smooth, "silky", "light" or similar words to describe the product.

Abdul Rahman Al Owais, Acting Minister of Health, said the regulation will be enforced once approved at the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) level. It is part of the UAE anti-tobacco executive bylaw, he said. He did not give a deadline when this will be enforced.

D…