11670 cigarette packs are on the way ...

According to WHO's guidelines, Standard Cigarette Package = Simple Brand Logo + Plain Color + Large Warning box name warning color But, in reality …

Here’s ONE cigarettes pack

Here are TWO

And FOUR

Here are 2,195 cigarette packs

Click on the color spectrum to zoom into individual cigarette packs

The bright red and gold, a sign of wealth in China, are often used on cigarette packs

Red and white packaging was popular

Red and white packaging was popular

Cigarette packs from North America usually had light colors or grey tones, but were mainly white

Red and white packaging was popular

Blue was more widely used New Zealand

Red and white packaging was popular

Note: Any reference to China includes only the Chinese mainland

Comparison of the popular colors used in cigarette packaging around the world

China Asia Europe NA SA Africa Oceania

Note: "NA" is the abbreviation of "North America"; "SA" is the abbreviation of "South America."

Chinese cigarette packs also feature traditional buildings, scenic spots and rare animals

China Other Scenery Animals Buildings

More than half of cigarette packs in the U.S. don't have images, but have geometric drawings instead

U.S. People Geometric Shapes Scenery Animals Other

Canadian Cancer Society last year ranked 205 countries and regions in terms of the size of the health warnings on their cigarette packaging. China ranked 115th

In 2001, Canada became the first country to require pictorial warnings on all cigarette packs, which occupy more than half the surface area of each package that was mostly grey or black.

Among the world’s top 5 economies, China has the highest smoking rate, 27.7%. The smoking population grew by 15 million from 2012 to 2015.

Source: IHME smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption, 1980-2012

Note: Statistics about China do not include those from Taiwan

Up to now,

China does not have a national tobacco control regulation to ban smoking in public places.

Enforcement of previous rules in certain cities has been weakened,

or is stuck due to a tug-of-war between smoking and anti-smoking lobbies.

Several WHO studies show that

 

standardized packaging

 

changes attitudes toward smoking,

 

including reducing its appeal to teenagers

Several WHO studies show that

standardized packaging

changes attitudes toward smoking,

including reducing its appeal to teenagers

Reporter: Luo Chen (intern)

Designer and Developer: Liu Jiaxin

Photos: Zhiwei Data, Chen Qing, Liu Yanzuo, Chen Juan

Producer: Huang Chen

Translator: Wu Gang, Poornima Weerasekara

Data Open： Cigarette package images Data

Annotation：Tone extraction relied on PIL (Python Imaging Library), a standard image processing library in Python environment.

Sampling method:Cigarette packages from different regions were sampled by using the simple random sampling method, the confidence interval was 90%, population variance was 25% and absolute error was 6%.

Data Sources:

Images of cigarette packages were collected from Tobacco Market of China, www.etmoc.com; Global Smoking Prevalence and Cigarette Consumption (1980-2012); Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington; The Tobacco Atlas, World Lung Foundation & American Cancer Society

Global Smoking Prevalence and Cigarette Consumption (1980-2012), Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington

The Tobacco Atlas, World Lung Foundation & American Cancer Society

Passport: Global Market Information Database, Euromonitor International, 2014. Proprietary Subscription-Based Data.