Plain Packaging: One of the Plain Simple Solutions for Nicotine Reduction in the Middle East

Tobacco use remains a major public health challenge and continues to be highly prevalent across the Middle East despite the implementation of conventional tobacco-control policies, including taxation, smoking restrictions, advertising bans, and graphic warning labels. Although these measures have contributed to reductions in tobacco use, additional strategies are needed to further reduce prevalence rates. This manuscript presents a narrative review examining plain packaging as a tobacco-control policy option for Middle Eastern countries. Plain packaging standardizes tobacco product packaging through the use of uniform fonts and colors on a plain background and is recommended by the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This narrative review synthesizes existing literature and regional policy developments to outline six key reasons supporting the adoption of plain packaging in the Middle East: evidence on effectiveness, underutilization, cost-free implementation, its role as a starting point toward tobacco endgame strategies, public support, and challenges posed by emerging nicotine products. Overall, plain packaging represents a viable and underutilized policy option that could strengthen existing tobacco-control efforts and support long-term reductions in tobacco use across the Middle East.