New Global Report Shows Switzerland’s Cigarette Warnings Lag a Decade Behind the rest of the World

What’s New in the 2025 Report

The 2025 edition of the International Status Report on Cigarette Package Health Warnings captures a world in motion — one where packaging has become a central front line in the battle over tobacco control, and where policy innovation is spreading faster than ever before.

The findings demonstrate both extraordinary global progress and persistent gaps. A growing majority of the world’s population — 66 % — is now protected by picture-based warnings. This represents an increase from 127 countries in 2023 to 140 countries and jurisdictions in 2025, a staggering leap from only 24 countries in 2008. In practical terms, more than two billion additional people are now exposed to stronger, more visible health warnings every time they see or handle a cigarette pack.

Dozens of governments have expanded the size, visibility, and rotation frequency of their warnings, recognizing that static, text-only messages quickly lose impact. Countries such as Gambia, Turkmenistan, Iceland, Malaysia, and Uzbekistan have all increased their warning sizes since the last edition of the report, while Nepal has gone even further — adopting a world first: 100 % coverage on both sides of cigarette packs. Although delayed by a legal challenge, Nepal’s move represents a symbolic milestone: the first country to make the brand itself completely disappear.

Meanwhile, a growing number of countries have introduced additional communication layers inside the pack or on the cigarettes themselves. Canada became the first country in 2024 to require direct health warnings on individual cigarettes, followed in 2025 by Australia. These “on-stick warnings” are visible at every puff, reach consumers even when cigarettes are sold individually, and send a powerful signal that there is “no safe cigarette.”

Australia also became only the second country — after Canada — to implement mandatory package inserts featuring cessation information and health education messages. Inserts, long used by the tobacco industry for promotional purposes, are being repurposed to provide supportive, evidence-based information for smokers who want to quit.

The report further highlights the continuing global shift toward plain packaging — a measure that removes all logos, colours, and brand designs from cigarette packs, leaving only a standardized drab background and text. As of 2025, 27 countries have adopted plain packaging and 44 in total are implementing or developing legislation. Newly added to the list are Iceland and Syria, with implementation foreseen by 2027.

Beyond the numbers, the 2025 edition reflects a qualitative shift: an increasing convergence between countries of very different income levels. What was once a pioneering measure limited to a handful of wealthy nations has now spread to small island states, low-income countries, and entire regions. From Timor-Leste and Mauritius to Türkiye and New Zealand, countries are progressively dismantling the tobacco industry’s last marketing stronghold — the cigarette pack itself.

Yet, as the report carefully notes, 47 countries — including 39 Parties to the WHO FCTC — still fail to meet even the minimum requirement of 30 % coverage mandated by international law. In many of these, the tobacco industry continues to enjoy near-total freedom to design attractive packaging that undermines health warnings and misleads consumers about relative risks.

The 2025 report thus presents a dual picture: one of impressive policy momentum and stagnant exceptions. It celebrates a growing international consensus that tobacco packages must tell the truth about the product they contain — but it also shines a harsh light on wealthy laggards, including Switzerland, where outdated and poorly visible warnings remain far below global standards.

Switzerland: no improvement, aside a bit of cosmetic yellow

In Switzerland, all efforts to introduce plain packaging during the debate on the new Federal Tobacco Products Act (LPTab) — which entered into force on October 1st, 2024 — were systematically blocked in Parliament under pressure from the tobacco lobby. The result, after years of paralysis, is a reform that amounts to little more than cosmetic change.

Health warnings have switched from white to yellow, and the pictorial images will finally be renewed — but still confined to the back of the pack, rather than occupying the most visible space on the front as recommended by the WHO FCTC. The most graphic and effective images, proven by international research to trigger stronger quit intentions, have been carefully excluded.

One year after the law came into force, the situation on the ground is deeply disappointing. Field checks conducted in late September 2025 in about fifteen retail outlets between Bern and Fribourg revealed that less than one-third of cigarette packs displayed the new warnings. Worse still, no snus or nicotine pouch products — which already failed to comply with basic labelling requirements — had been updated at all. The same is true for most e-cigarette products, where only a few isolated brands carry the new messages. Online retailers continue to show old, non-compliant visuals, even for standard cigarette brands.

Although the new law granted the industry a full year of transition, enforcement appears virtually nonexistent. Manufacturers and retailers are now being given even more time to “sell off their old stock” — with no clear oversight mechanism to determine when those stocks are truly depleted, or whether they are quietly being replenished.

For a country that prides itself on regulatory precision, Switzerland’s approach stands out as an example of deliberate inertia. While over 130 countries worldwide have implemented large, rotating picture warnings — and 27 have adopted plain packaging — Switzerland remains stuck with outdated, fragmented, and weak labelling that protects the tobacco industry far more effectively than it protects public health.