Trade liberalisation has the potential to increase certain unhealthy habits such as smoking and over-consumption of alcohol and unhealthy foods, leading to a corresponding increase in non-communicable diseases (‘NCDs'). A range of measures designed to reduce consumption of these products may...

Recent challenges to public health regulation such as Indonesia's challenge to the United States' tobacco flavouring ban in the World Trade Organization (‘WTO'), and the WTO and investment treaty challenges to Australia's plain tobacco packaging scheme, have raised common problems of evidence...

As evidence of tobacco's devastating effect on human health has grown in recent decades, States' regulatory efforts to restrict tobacco use have correspondingly increased. A key international response to the globalisation of the tobacco epidemic has been the World Health Organization's Framework...

This paper examines the recent WTO Panel Report in US- Clove Cigarettes within the context of the other two ongoing WTO disputes concerning US measures under the WTO's Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. Appeals in two of the cases are underway and the third is anticipated, providing the...

Australia is set to become the first country in the world to implement a scheme mandating the plain packaging of tobacco products. The outcome of the scheme in Australia in the coming months and years will establish a critical precedent for both tobacco control interests and the tobacco...

The Australian federal government recently released an exposure draft of legislation to introduce a scheme for the mandatory ‘plain packaging’ of cigarettes and other tobacco products from 2012. The scheme will prohibit the use of brand logos, graphics and colors on tobacco products and...