Kazakhstan will start requiring pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs from July, according to Azhar Tulegaliyeva, director of the Medical Care Organization Department. The country will be the first nation in the Commonwealth of Independent States to mandate graphic warnings in line with the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which Kazakhstan ratified in 2007.
Under the new law, cigarette packs will contain smoking-related diseases such as stroke and heart attack, and show the threat of miscarriage among pregnant women and the impact of smoking on premature aging of the skin.