In 1989, the New Zealand Department of Health’s Toxic Substances Board first recommended that cigarettes be sold only in white packs with black text and no colours or logos.

Public health officials in Canada developed proposals for plain packaging of tobacco products in the 1990s. A parliamentary committee reviewed the evidence and concluded that plain packaging could be a “reasonable step in the overall strategy to reduce tobacco consumption”. The committee recommended that legislation be implemented pending the outcome of government-sponsored research on the likely effectiveness of plain packs. However following tobacco industry lobbying and changes in government ministers the proposal was dropped.

Australia, with the enactment of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act in 2011,became the first country in the world to require tobacco products to be sold in plain packaging. Products manufactured since October 2012, and all on sale since 1 December 2012 must be plain packaged.In June 2014 Ireland announced it was proposing legislation that would make it the first country in the European Union and the second in the world to introduce plain packaging. Ireland's minister for health published details of the government's proposed Public Health (Standardised Packaging of Tobacco) Bill 2014 on 10 June 2014.