Anti-smoking push: Menthol cigarettes banned and cigarettes wrapped in 'ugly ... trends now
Australia will put warning signs on individual cigarettes and ban flavoured and menthol cigarettes and increase the price of rolling tobacco in a major new effort to curb the habit.
The moves are part of sweeping new anti-smoking laws announced by Federal Health Minister Mark Butler on Wednesday, which will also see roll-your-own tobacco made more expensive and a major review to try and curb the widespread use of e-cigarettes.
Mr Butler announced the new laws on Wednesday and also flagged that cigarette products will be standardised to remove marketing advantages used by tobacco companies despite the introduction of plain packaging just over a decade ago.
The Albanese government has announced major new anti-smoking laws, which will ban flavoured tobacco products such as menthol cigarettes
In a speech to commemorate that change, which was a world-first brought in by the Labor government under Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Mr Butler said the government aimed to more than halve the current number of smokers by 2030.
'Today is an important first step in re-establishing our (Australia's) reputation as a global leader in tobacco control,' Mr Butler said.
A first step will be updating the already graphic warnings printed on cigarette packets, which often show the results of cancer on the body.
'At best, those warnings are ignored, and at worst, they are mocked,' Mr Butler said.
The Albanese government is also looking at making the cigarettes inside wrapped in unattractive colours, with each having a warning, such as 'smoking kills', printed on them.
Under the new laws the warnings on cigarette packets will be updated and cigarettes themselves may be made in 'uglier' colours and have individual health alerts
Advocacy group the Cancer Council backed the proposed changes saying they had proved successful in places such as Canada.
'The colours that the research has looked at so far are things like a very yucky brown or a sludgy green, they're not the sorts of things that you want to put in your mouth,' spokesperson Megan Varlow told the ABC.
'Coupled with the warnings that we see on packs, what they do is they reinforce the harms associated with cigarettes, and remind people every time they have a smoke.
'So if there's 20
