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Graphic Cigarette Warning Labels Would Violate Free Speech, Judge Rules
By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 1, 2012
Modified Mar 1, 2012
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By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 1, 2012
Modified Mar 1, 2012
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Poor tobacco companies can't advertise on TV, and persecuted smokers can't even enjoy their fine line of carcinogenic products in most places in New York—and now the government wants to bogart the space on their cigarette packages with graphic ads to remind customers about the consequences of their actions. Luckily for Big Tobacco, they've got Judge Richard J. Leon in their corner. Yesterday the George W. Bush appointee blocked a federal requirement that would have forced U.S. tobacco companies to put big graphic images on their cigarette packages.
The graphic images would have covered most of the cigarette packages and included such images as a guy smoking out of his tracheotomy, tobacco stained teeth, and diseased lungs. Big tobacco has been fighting the requirement, which would have cost them millions of dollars, and in November judge Leon put a temporary block on it, because he expected the tobacco companies to win their lawsuit. In his ruling, Leon blasted Congress for failing to “consider the First Amendment implications of this legislation," writing:
[The graphic images] were neither designed to protect the consumer from confusion or deception, nor to increase consumer awareness of smoking risks; rather, they were crafted to evoke a strong emotional response calculated to provoke the viewer to quit or never start smoking. While the line between the constitutionally permissible dissemination of factual information and the impermissible expropriation of a company's advertising space for government advocacy can be frustratingly blurry, here the line seems quite clear.
The FDA vowed to appeal the ruling, but for now big tobacco is off the hook. One lawyer for Lorillard Tobacco tells the AP, "The government, as the court said, is free to speak for itself, but it may not, except in the rarest circumstance, require others to mouth its position." But Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, called Leon's ruling "wrong on the science and the law. The warnings unequivocally tell the truth about cigarette smoking — that it is addictive, harms children, causes fatal lung disease, cancer, strokes and heart disease, and can kill you. What isn't factual or accurate about these warnings? Not even the tobacco industry disputes these facts."
Tagged
Big Tobacco
cigarette warning labels
cigarettes
first amendment
free speech
smoking
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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