FDA Unveils New Cigarette Warning Labels
The New York Times reports:
WASHINGTON — Federal drug regulators on Wednesday unveiled 36 proposed warning labels for cigarette packages, including one showing a toe tag on a corpse and another in which a mother blows smoke on her baby.
Designed to cover half the surface area of a pack or carton of cigarettes, and a fifth of any advertisements for them, the labels are intended to spur smokers to quit by providing graphic reminders of tobacco’s dangers. The labels are required under a law passed last year that gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate, but not ban, tobacco products for the first time.
Public health officials hope that the new labels will re-energize the nation’s antismoking efforts, which have stalled in recent years. About 20.6 percent of the nation’s adults, or 46.6 million people, and about 19.5 percent of high school students, or 3.4 million teenagers, are smokers.
Every day, about 1,000 children and teenagers become regular smokers, and 4,000 try smoking for the first time. About 440,000 people die every year from smoking-related health problems, and the cost to treat such problems exceeds $96 billion a year.
Some cigarette manufacturers vowed to fight the labels in federal court, saying they infringe the companies’ property and free-speech rights. A federal judge in Kentucky ruled in January in a related lawsuit that the F.D.A. could require graphic warning labels but that a proposed restriction intended to eliminate attractive coloring from cigarette packaging infringes free speech. That ruling has been appealed.
“The use of graphic warnings makes no contribution to the awareness of these risks and serves only to stigmatize smokers and denormalize smoking,” said Anthony Hemsley, a vice president at Commonwealth Brands, the maker of USA Gold cigarettes.
