The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion of Oman has issued the Ministerial Decision 67/2023 Deeming an Omani Standard Specification Binding (OS 1655:2022), establishing plain packaging for all tobacco products available on the market in the country. The current Decision of plain packaging replaces the Ministerial Decision 12/2012 Adopting the Gulf Technical Regulation 246/2011 regarding the Labels of Tobacco Products Packaging as a Binding Omani Standard Specification. 

Please join the World Bank’s Global Tax Program Health Tax Workstream for a launch webinar of the Health Taxes Knowledge Note Series on Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at 8:00-9:15 AM ET.  This launch webinar will present and discuss the first two notes in the series, ““Why Health Taxes Matter” and “Health Taxes and Inflation.”

To join on Zoom, PLEASE REGISTER HERE.

Access the Health Taxes Knowledge Notes here

Health taxes are one of the most cost-effective measures for reducing consumption of products with negative health impacts and associated mortality and morbidity. As part of larger tax systems, these taxes can promote healthier populations while generating revenue in low-capacity environments and despite tax administration challenges. However, good health tax policy and administration are critical to achieving positive health and revenue impacts. The Global Tax Program Health Taxes Knowledge Note Series provides policy makers with an overview of relevant issues and feasible policy choices in setting health taxes based on questions that emerge from the field during health tax reforms.

The Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI), UHC/Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health (NMH) department of the WHO Regional Office for the Easter Mediterranean (EMRO) has released a database of new, copyrights-free graphic health warnings for tobacco packages to be used or adapted by countries and Parties to the WHO FCTC to warn the public about the dangers of tobacco use.

This database reflects part of TFI's initiative to boost the implementation of Article 11 of the WHO FCTC, which requires Parties to the Convention to implement large, rotating graphic health warnings on all tobacco products packaging and labelling.

The 30 newly-developed graphic health warnings visualize concepts on warning against the dangers of tobacco across 9 topics. These include:

1.      Impact of tobacco on pregnancy

2.      Tobacco use and specific types of cancers (e.g. lung, mouth and throat)

3.      Tobacco use, impotence and fertility

4.      Tobacco use and aesthetic effects (e.g. wrinkles and pre-mature aging)

5.      Smoking as a leading cause of death

6.      Tobacco and cardiovascular diseases

7.      Second-hand smoke and children’s health

8.      Tobacco and financial loses

9.      Dangers of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products

The designs have gone through field-testing amongst various regional population groups and multiple stages of modification according to the feedback received, to maximize their effectiveness and socio-cultural appropriateness.

In this regard, countries are invited to make use of these new graphic health warnings and, when needed, countries also can pretest them at national level to select the most suitable to their national context.

The database can be accessed through this link and the health warnings are available in Arabic and English. 

The development of these new graphic health warnings was undertaken with financial resources from the FCTC 2030 project, through generous funding provided by Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom.