Tobacco companies are against laws in both developed and developing countries. Tobacco industry officials say that they respect countries' efforts to protect public health, but meet numerous difficulties with promotion of their brands because more and more countries do prohibit cigarette ads. Frequently, the only space left is the packaging, and even it becomes smaller, as many countries now demand that packages to have ugly pictures of people with cancer. For example, in Australia, brand names are reduced to uniform block letters on plain olive backgrounds.

Gareth Cooper, group head of regulation at British American Tobacco, told that eliminating tobacco companies logos removes their assurance to customers of the origin and quality of their lawfully available tobacco products, which means that they and their characteristics become indistinguishable from those of their competitors. In the beginning of 1990s, the USA government used to pressure countries to open their markets to American tobacco companies. As smoking rates in some of these countries got higher and higher, outrage grew, and in these conditions President Bill Clinton published an executive order in 2001 that banned the USA government from lobbying on the tobacco industry's behalf.Other types of trade agreements have emerged that give companies rights.

The main aim of such treaties is to promote prosperity by reducing trade barriers and protecting investors from monopolization by foreign governments. They permit tobacco companies to sue directly, instead of having to persuade a state to take up their case. According to Robert Stumberg, a law professor at the Harrison Institute for Public Law at Georgetown University,.they have proliferated since the 1990s, and number around 3,000, up from a few hundred in the late 1980s,

Such African countries as (Namibia, Gabon, Togo and Uganda) have received warnings from the tobacco industry that their laws have nothing to do with international treaties, said Patricia Lambert, head of the international legal consortium at the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.€They're trying to intimidate every person,€ said Jonathan Liberman, director of the McCabe Center for Law and Cancer in Australia, which gives legal support to countries that have been challenged by tobacco companies. In Namibia, the tobacco industry has declared that demanding big warning labels on cigarette packages violates its intellectual property rights.

Mr. Cooper, of British American Tobacco that produces, said that countries should take into consideration the broader context of implementing regulations that can impact trade.Thomas Bollyky, a trade lawyer at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that a number of developing countries are at a disadvantage in investment cases because they do not have the specialized legal expertise or resources to fight.