Original homepage

SEATCA provides constant technical expertise and support to ASEAN Member States in developing and implementing of effective health warnings policies in compliance with World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) Article 11 Guidelines. The Guidelines on Article 11  (packaging and labelling on tobacco products) was adopted at the third session of the FCTC Conference of Parties (COP 3) in November 2008.

With SEATCA support, all ten ASEAN countries have legislated pictorial health warnings (PHWs) on cigarette packages. Thailand has adopted 85% PHWs, the largest warning size since 2014. Four other countries (Brunei, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Singapore (July 2020)) require warnings size (75%).

Thailand and Singapore are the first two Asian countries that have legislated standardized packaging, which eliminated all promotional aspects of packaging including brand colours, logos and graphics on tobacco packages, effective on 10 September 2019 and 1 July 2020 respectively. Myanmar is the third Asian country to adopt standardized packaging as part of its commitment to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The Standardized Packaging Notification will take effect on 10 April 2022. However, the implementation of standardized packaging is delayed to 31 December 2023 due to strong tobacco industry interference.

Malaysia and the Philippines have taken initiatives to consider standardized packaging measures. As of October 2021, more than 30 countries and territories are moving forward with standardized packaging, with 21 countries having adopted the measure following Australia’s lead (in 2012), 3* having it in practice and at least 14 other countries are in varying stages of introducing standardized packaging laws.

Nine ASEAN countries have banned the use of misleading descriptors such as “light” and “mild” on any tobacco product packages. Six countries gave less than 10 months to the tobacco industry to comply with pictorial health warnings. The PHWs are applied to all shapes and forms of tobacco packaging.

The ASEAN region’s PHWs images are shared and copyright-free images can be obtained through the ASEAN image bank and sharing mechanism facilitated by SEATCA.

* Standardized packaging has been implemented in practice in 3 countries where packages are imported from a country with plain packaging – Monaco (from France), Cook Islands (from New Zealand), and Niue (from Australia).  

For more information, please refer to SEATCA FCTC Article 11 Index.

Country	Year of implementation- Round of rotation	Size (%) and location (front & back)		Date of approval	Date of implementation	Number of rotating current health warnings	Duration of industry compliance
	2008, 2012	Top 75%, 75%		13 Mar 2012	1 Sept 2012	7	less than 6 months
	2016, 2018, 2021*	Top 55%, 55%		20 Nov 2020	1 Aug 2021	2	9 months
	2014, 2018	Top 40%, 40%		13 Dec 2017	31 May 2018	5	12 months
	2016**	Top 75%, 75%		23 May 2016	1 Jan 2018	6	19 months
	2009, 2014	Top 50%, 60%		11 Jun 2013	1 Jan 2014	12	Less than 7 months
	2016, 2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2022***	Top 75%, 75%		12 Oct 2021	10 Apr 2022	10	6 months
	2016, 2018, 2020, 2022****	Bottom 50%, 50%		15 Apr 2021	Mar 2022	12	12 months
	2004, 2006, 2013, 2020*****	Top 75%, 75%		1 Jul 2019	1 Jul 2020	6	12 months
	2005, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2019, 2022******	Top 85%, 85%		14 Jul 2021	11 Jan 2022	10	9 months
	2013	Top 50%, 50%		8 Feb 2013	8 Aug 2013 for soft packs, 8 Dec 2013 for hard packs	6	6-10 months