U.S. District Court judge halts graphic warnings on cigarette packages

RICHMOND, Va. — A federal judge on Thursday asked the Justice Department and America’s largest cigarette makers whether she should delay an order in a 12-year-old lawsuit against the tobacco industry while other courts decide newer cases challenging new tobacco marketing restrictions and graphic cigarette warning labels the government has proposed.


U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington ordered the parties to submit their views in the case in which she found the companies, including Philip Morris USA, maker of top-selling Marlboro cigarettes, masked the dangers of smoking.


It is not a myth that smoking cigarettes kills. In fact a lot of lives have been wasted due to glitzy advertising campaigns by the tobacco companies which make it look like it is a macho and sexy thing to smoke. Yet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that the adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for an estimated 443,000 deaths, or nearly one of every five deaths, every year in the United States.


And so the Food and Drug Administration has been planning to demand the use of nine text and graphic health warnings on labels of cigarette packages and cartons by September 2012. The graphic images on these labels include a man smoking through a tracheotomy hole and a dead person with a surgery-scarred chest. The FDA feels this initiative would help curb tobacco use and encourage users to quit smoking.


A judge has however stepped in to temporarily block this plan. Alicia Gallegos has reported for American Medical News "Judge halts graphic warnings on cigarette packages." Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has said in his opinion the tobacco companies showed that they probably will prevail on their claim that the mandatory graphic images unconstitutionally force commercial speech. This decision was a victory for tobacco companies who claim the warnings are unfair and would cost millions of dollars to produce.


The government’s proposed corrective ads would cover the addictiveness of nicotine, the lack of health benefits from “low tar,” ‘’ultra-light” and “mild” cigarettes and the dangers of second-hand smoke. The companies have argued the statements are inflammatory, inaccurate and “designed solely to shame and humiliate” the companies.


The FDA’s new marketing restrictions include cigarette warning labels featuring images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat, the corpse of a dead smoker, diseased lungs and a smoker wearing an oxygen mask.


Tobacco companies are increasingly relying on their packaging to build brand loyalty and grab consumers. It’s one of few advertising venues they can use after the government curbed their presence in magazines, billboards and TV. The companies have said the graphic labels could cost them millions of dollars in lost sales and increased packaging costs.


Earlier this month a federal judge blocked the requirement that would have begun forcing tobacco companies next year to put the images on their cigarette packages and in advertisements.


Another case the tobacco companies filed over the marketing restrictions is pending before the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati after a judge in Kentucky upheld most of the marketing restrictions.


The defendants in the corrective statements case include Philip Morris USA’s parent company, Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc.; Greensboro, N.C.-based Lorillard Inc., and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., and its parent company, Reynolds American Inc., based in Winston-Salem, N.C.