The road from conception to implementation took about two years, delayed by legal hurdles and efforts to secure Parliament's stamp of approval. But toward the end of 2012, the new olive green packs with large, graphic images of the ravages of mouth cancer or gangrene hit the shelves.

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Unsurprisingly, smokers hated them.

Support for the measure was a paltry 28 percent and it was more likely to come from people who expressed a strong desire to quit smoking.

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But a new study of public opinion surrounding the policy change that was released this week in the journal Tobacco Control found a dramatic shift since the labels were introduced.

Now, 49 percent of smokers support the new packaging -- as gruesome as it is -- compared with about 35 percent who oppose them.

And more surprisingly, they were more likely to go from opposing the packaging to supporting it if they wanted to quit smoking before the packaging went into effect.

Those who oppose the packs were more likely to be heavy smokers and those who underestimated the potential risks of smoking. Support for the packs, on the other hand, was associated with quitting activity.

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Other indicators that have emerged recently from Australia's experiment seem to confirm those general findings.

As my colleague Roberto Ferdman notes, the new packaging appears to have coincided with a slew of positive developments in terms of smoking cessation:

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Shortly after the new law was implemented, calls to Quitline, a helpline for those looking to quit smoking, spiked by nearly 80 percent . None of the tobacco industry's warnings about the potential for increases in purchases of illicit, unbranded tobacco have proven clairvoyant — the proportion of smokers purchasing such types of tobacco is actually decreasing, according to a study conducted last month . And while some have pointed to upticks in cigarette sales as evidence that the legislation hasn't, in fact, worked, last year's increase — which came in at 0.3 percent — is likely an outlier (it was the first in more than five years). Also last year, there was a much more substantial decrease in the actual number of people smoking in the country. The number of people who smoke fell by 3 percent last year, dropping the smoking rate in Australia to well below 15 percent.

Unlike Australia, the United States was never able to overcome industry -- and smoker -- opposition to startling warning labels.

After the Food and Drug Administration proposed labels (like this one of a man in a coffin) for cigarette packages, a federal judge ruled the move was unconstitutional in 2012. The FDA then abandoned the effort in 2013.