Cigarette packets in Australia
location-specific item packaging
Cigarette packets in Australia have undergone significant changes. Since 1 December 2012, all forms of branding logos, colours, and promotional texts are banned from cigarette pack designs. In turn they were replaced with drab dark brown packets (Pantone 448 C) and graphic images with smoking-related themes to try to reduce the smoking population of Australia to 10% by 2018 from 15% in 2012.
In addition to other public health measures, packaging requirements have further decreased the prevalence and uptake of smoking, and have reduced cigarette sales in Australia.
History
In 1973, Australia's first health warning on cigarette packages appeared with the simple message 'WARNING — SMOKING IS A HEALTH HAZARD'. Since 1 March 2006, graphic images depicting the effects of smoking cigarettes have been required to be displayed on cigarette packets. Warnings must cover 30% of the front and 90% of the back of the box. The 10% of the back not occupied by a warning is used for the message "Sale to underage persons prohibited".
Since 1 December 2012 all forms of branding logos, colours, and promotional texts are banned from cigarette pack designs. The requirement is for plain cigarette packaging showing only brand name and health warning messages.
The public source identifies “Cigarette packets in Australia” as location-specific item packaging. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cigarette, packets and Australia.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16958381. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2018, 1973 and 2006.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cigarette packets in Australia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.