Four of the five largest U.S. tobacco companies are suing the federal government over new graphic cigarette labels that include the sewn-up corpse of a smoker and a picture of diseased lungs.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Lorillard Tobacco Co., Commonwealth Brands Inc., Liggett Group LLC and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company Inc., said they filed their suit against the Food and Drug Administration late Tuesday.
The companies say the warning labels violate their free speech rights by requiring them to carry a government-sponsored emotionally charged appeal to not use their legal products. They want the labels stopped.
FDA officials said they could not comment because of pending litigation. The agency said in June when it introduced the labels that they are powerful and frank warnings about the dangers of smoking.
(Source: USA Today)
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7 Responses
Given the high costs of social security, it is really in the country’s interest to let people smoke. They contribute more taxes while alive, and expire before they have time to collect social security benefits. Smoking reduces the number of old people dependent on social security, which has an excellent macro economic effect (albeit a very bad microeconomic impact on the smoker, but then again, in the short run, they are dead).
By their logic, the food companies should sue for requiring warnings on food that needs refrigeration and the like. That violates their free speech, too, according to that logic.
Regardless, this is all silly. If these purveyors of death and disease don’t want labels on their “products” then the FDA should simply ban outright those carcinogenic “products” and these companies should just blow a smoky kiss good-bye to their evil businesses that cause the death and terrible suffering of so many people around the world.
And in this economy, more government money now has to be wasted – on this nonsense. Again, if the government simply bans it outright then *poof*, the whole lawsuit goes up in smoke.
A more effective approach would be to write. “WARNING SMOKING IS FOR LOSERS”!!! I am sure it will work.
It’s time to shut down the tobacco companies. No one in the world would be allowed to invent a product that is proven to cause so much damage and get it approved today. Dont think I am crazy, but would it not be better to put coca leaf back in Coca Cola than to have cigarette ash smear precious lungs and ammonia, tar, nicotine, formaldehyde, etc enter the entire body?
#1 akuperma
Yup, the ugly truth that no one wants to talk about.
#3 yosss
I’m pretty sure that people who still smoke, given all we know about what it does to your body, are beyond caring about what any label on their package says.
#4 MoshiachNow01
By that logic, we should surely ban all alcohol, as it causes more damage to society (drunk driving) than cigarettes. We make WAYYY too much tax money from tobacco (not to mention the thousands of jobs in that industry) to close it down. It’ll die a slow, painful death over the next 50 years…much like its customers.
#1: To figure whether smokers cause a net financial loss or gain, you’d also have to consider the effects on the medical system and on commerce. It might make a nice dissertation for an economist: what would happen if all of the sudden all the smokers quit?
Applicable (& controversial) study:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1442555.stm