AUSTRALIA is set to go ahead with the world's toughest cigarette laws - using shock tactics to get people to quit smoking.
Tobacco companies Down Under will have to sell cigarettes in murky olive green packets covered in graphic health warnings.
From December pictures of cancerous mouths, blackened teeth and blind eyes will be on packs of fags.
Tobacco giants challenged the new laws in the Australian High Court, but failed in their bid to overturn the legislation.
British health officials are watching the move closely with a consultation on changing cigarette packet designs in the UK due to be published soon.
The Australian government has called on the world to follow its example and cut down the estimated one billion smokers worldwide.
Attorney-General Nicola Roxon hailed the ruling as “a watershed moment for tobacco control around the world”. “The message to the rest of the world is big tobacco can be taken on and beaten.
“Without brave governments willing to take the fight up to big tobacco, they’d still have us believing that tobacco is neither harmful nor addictive."
Australia wants to cut the number of smokers from around 15 percent of the population to 10 percent by 2018. Authorities say smoking kills around 15,000 Australians a year.
Scott McIntyre, a spokesman for British American Tobacco, who challenged the law, said: "It's still a bad law that will only benefit organised crime groups which sell illegal tobacco on our streets."
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