Cigarette Warnings US Tobacco Companies

A US court on Friday shot down orders to slap graphic anti-tobacco messages on cigarette packs, saying the government overstepped its authority by trying to "browbeat" smokers into quitting, AFP reports. In line with campaigns in several other nations, the United States planned from September 22 to require images on cigarette packs including a man smoking through a hole in his throat and a body with chest staples on an autopsy table. In a 2-1 decision, the US Court of Appeals in Washington said that the images planned on cigarette packs were not necessarily false but they went beyond "pure attempts to convey information to consumers." "They are unabashed attempts to evoke emotion (and perhaps embarrassment) and browbeat consumers into quitting," Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who was appointed by former president George W. Bush, wrote for the majority. She also said that the US Food and Drug Administration "has not provided a shred of evidence" that graphic warnings directly reduced rates of smoking. Tobacco companies had filed suit against the federal agency, saying that the cigarette labels violated the US Constitution's First Amendment which prohibits any law that restricts freedom of speech. Brown wrote that the government "can certainly require that consumers be fully informed about the dangers of hazardous products." "But this case raises novel questions about the scope of the government's authority to force the manufacturer of a product to go beyond making purely factual and accurate commercial disclosures and undermine its own economic interest," she wrote. Brown said the court faced the question of how much leeway to grant the government "to convey the state's subjective -- and perhaps even ideological -- view that consumers should reject this otherwise legal, but disfavored, product." Brown pointed to the Food and Drug Administration's own statement when announcing the warnings that every pack of cigarettes would become "a mini-billboard" for its message.