Plain tobacco packaging Court ruled in favour of the Australian government. British American Tobacco placed freedom of information requests on a Cancer Institute NSW research survey of school students aged between 12-17, which asked how they react to plain packaging, where they get cigarettes from and what age they started smoking. The Cancer Council Victoria fought the FOI request, saying that the tobacco company wanted to use the survey information to change their marketing to children to increase cigarette smoking among youth. Phillip Morris was ordered to pay the Australian government's legal fees. A FOI request by Nick Xenophon and Rex Patrick revealed
Tobacco packaging warning messages requires tobacco product packaging to display pictures of the ill effects of smoking, occupying the bottom half of the display area in both front and the back side of the packaging. On March 3, 2016, Department of Health (DOH) secretary Janette Garin started the implementation of Republic Act 10643, requiring tobacco manufacturers to include graphic health warnings on newer cigarette packaging. With the Graphic Health Warning Act implemented, graphic health warnings are used on all newer cigarette packaging, and older packages using text-only warnings are required to be replaced by newer packaging incorporating graphic warnings. The 12 new warnings, showing