22 March 2012 | Singapore - WHO Director-General Margaret Chan today urged the world to "stand shoulder to shoulder" against the tobacco industry's attempts to overturn Australia's new path breaking tobacco control law.

Tobacco products to be sold in "plain packaging"

The Australian law requires tobacco products to be sold in "plain packaging" – that is, drab packages with graphic images of tobacco-related diseases and without logos. Australia is the first country to require plain packaging.

"We must make plain packaging a big success so that it becomes the success of the world," Dr Chan told Professor Jane Halton, Secretary of Australia's Department of Health and Ageing, and other delegates to the 15th World Conference on Tobacco or Health taking place in Singapore.