Thursday, August 18, 2011
Faced with putting graphic anti-smoking images on their packs and cartons, tobacco companies have filed suit to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) new requirements on the marketing of cigarettes.
In June, the FDA issued the first major change to warning labels in more than a quarter century. The new rules included the mandate that tobacco companies print graphics on cigarette packaging that show such offputting images as discolored teeth and lungs and a man exhaling smoke through a tracheotomy opening in his neck.
Four of the five largest U.S. tobacco companies, led by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co., sued the federal government, saying the warnings violate their free speech rights.
“Never before in the United States have producers of a lawful product been required to use their own packaging and advertising to convey an emotionally-charged government message urging adult consumers to shun their products,” the companies wrote in a brief filed in federal court in Washington.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who oversees the FDA, said in June that the warning labels were frank and honest about the dangers of smoking. Anti-tobacco advocates argue that the diseases caused by smoking add to the helath care expenses borne by taxpayers.
Big Tobacco lost a similar complaint last year in a Kentucky federal court when the judge ruled the companies could be forced to put graphic images and warnings covering the top half of cigarette packages by the fall of 2012. That ruling is now pending before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Tobacco Companies File Lawsuit Over Warning Labels (by Jeffrey Collins, Associated Press)
Cigarette Companies File 2nd Suit Over Warnings (by Duff Wilson, New York Times)
U.S. Releases Graphic Images to Deter Smokers (by Duff Wilson, New York Times)
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