Liz Gyekye / packagingnews.co.uk
Label ignites US tobacco legal battle
US tobacco companies want a judge to put a stop to new graphic cigarette labels that include the sewn-up corpse of a smoker and pictures of diseased lungs.
Reynolds American’s RJ Reynolds unit, Lorillard, Liggett Group and Commonwealth Brands, owned by Britain’s Imperial Tobacco Group sued the US Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday (18 August), saying the warnings violate their free speech rights.
They say the label plans unfairly urge adults to shun their legal products and will cost millions to produce.
RJ Reynolds brands include Camel and Winston, while Lorillard brands include Newport and True.
The new warnings will be required on cigarette packs from September 2012.
Free will
“The notion that the government can require those who manufacture a lawful product to emblazon half of its packaging with pictures and words admittedly drafted to persuade the public not to purchase that product cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny,” said Floyd Abrams, a lawyer representing the cigarette makers, said in a statement.
Abrams added: “The government can engage in as much anti-smoking advocacy as it chooses 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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The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act requires such labels to cover the top half of the front and back of cigarette packages and 20% of the printed advertising.
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