In June we blogged about the new tobacco labels mandated by the FDA. The nine labels feature medical and emotional risks involved in smoking, including a graphic photo of oral cancer. Now, several large tobacco companies have filed a joint lawsuit against the FDA calling the new law unconstitutional and in violation of the first amendment. Read the quote below or read the whole story at DrBicuspid.com. What do you think? Is it unconstitutional? Will tobacco win this one? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!
~Kim Schneider, communications editor
Quoted from DrBicuspid.com:
“The regulations violate the First Amendment,” said Floyd Abrams, a partner in the New York law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel, which is representing Lorillard (tobacco). “The notion that the government can require those who manufacture a lawful product to emblazon half of its package with pictures and words admittedly drafted to persuade the public not to purchase that product cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny. The government can engage in as much antismoking advocacy as it chooses in whatever language and with whatever pictures it chooses; it cannot force those who lawfully sell tobacco to the public to carry that message, those words, and those pictures.”
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