I wonder. How much did this decision cost the tobacco companies? (mildly graphic image of dead man)

[Stinky The Clown]

Judge blocks graphic cigarette labels


A federal judge on Wednesday told the FDA to find better ways to warn consumers of the dangers of smoking than "gruesome images." (Handout)

Reuters

2:51 p.m. CST, February 29, 2012
A U.S. judge sided with tobacco companies on Wednesday, ruling that regulations requiring large graphic health warnings on cigarette packaging and advertising violate free-speech rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Cigarette makers challenged the Food and Drug Administration's rule requiring companies to label tobacco products with images of rotting teeth, diseased lungs and other photos to illustrate the dangers of smoking.

"The government has failed to carry both its burden of demonstrating a compelling interest and its burden of demonstrating that the rule is narrowly tailored to achieve a constitutionally permissible form of compelled commercial speech," U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said.

While educating the public about the dangers of smoking "might be compelling, an interest in simply advocating that the public not purchase a legal product is not," Leon wrote in a 19-page ruling.

>snip<

more here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-judge-rules-graphic-cigarette-labels-unconstitutional-20120229,0,2481424.story

How does "free speech" apply to tobacco companies, you might ask. I'm no legal scholar, but this seems to be coming from the same place as Citizens United.

[onehandle]

1. A million bucks to the judge's Swiss bank account?

Peanuts.

[JSnuffy]

2. Because...

... it's ridiculous to expect that a private company should have to print and distribute a government mandated message

Let alone the fact that it is contrary to their own interests.

[2ndAmForComputers]

9. That also applies to the current warning labels, you know.

This is just a difference in degree.

[JSnuffy]

12. Absolutely...

[Summer Hathaway]

3. While I don't dispute the inherent dangers of smoking

I've often wondered where the appropriate 'pics' are on the labels of candy bars, potato chips, soda pop, fast-food garbage burgers, etc.

Or, for that matter, the 'sin tax' on the aforementioned products that contribute nothing to nutrition.

Sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander, one wonders why one product that is detrimental to overall health is targeted, while others are free to promote their wares without the same interference.

[Stinky The Clown]

4. There's no second hand diabetes or second hand heart disease

[Summer Hathaway]

5. And there are no health problems caused

by a diet of too many candy bars and too much Coca-Cola?

Second-hand health issues are another topic entirely - why aren't the first-hand health problems equally important?

You can't help but wonder how fewer chocolate bars would be consumed by kids (too young to concern themselves with health issues) if they had a 'sin tax' attached, making them less affordable to children with a pocketful of money meant to be spent on more nutritious fare.

If you are 'for' a sin tax on cigarettes, along with graphic photos of the consequences displayed on the product's labeling, why not be equally 'for' the same on sugar-laden, devoid-of-any-nutritional-value garbage that is marketed to kids?

[Stinky The Clown]

7. You know, you're attacking me for a position I haven't espoused.

But have at it if you feel better.

Your argument is totally off topic. This thread was about tobacco warnings. It has nothing to do with food.

That's not to say there is no problem with junk food. Just that it is not part of the topic being discussed.

[joshcryer]

13. Childhood obesity is certainly second hand.

[Stinky The Clown]

14. What does childhood obesity have to do with tobacco?

[joshcryer]

18. It doesn't. It does, however, have to do with diabetes or heart disease.

You're the one who proposed that straw man.

There's a reasonable case to be made to reduce the colorful and enticing nature of packaging of unhealthy foods.

We know that SF tried banning toys in Happy Meals (to no avail).

[Heddi]

6. That's not a dead person

Or it's the pinkest, most pert looking dead person I've ever seen.

Were he to be dead enough to be autopsied (which is implied by the staples to the chest), his lips wouldn't be that colour pink...they would be a sallow yellow just like the rest of his skin. He'd have a gray/yellow/greenish colouration to him. He'd be more..dead..looking.

I'm an ER Nurse. i've seen *a lot* of dead people. People who are freshly dead, people who have been dead for a long time, people who have been dying for a long time.This is not a dead person. If you want to shock people, then the image you are showing should be, yanno, shocking. This is not what dead people, especially people who died from smoking-related illnesses (lung problems, heart problems, cancer) look like.

This guy looks like he just got done with having lunch at Qdoba

[Stinky The Clown]

8. "If you want to shock people, then the image you are showing should be, yanno, shocking."

The image is the one that accompanied the article. I didn't realize it would offend you that I failed to look for a more shocking image.

What does this have to do with the topic at hand?

[Heddi]

16. I'm not criticizing you, I knew it wasn't your picture

I read the article, and knew it came with the article.

What it has to do with the topic at hand (graphic images on cigarette labels) is that the image isn't graphic. It isn't even what it purports to be: a grizzly picture of the reality of smoking. It's a picture of a dude that may have just had open heart surgery, or something, who isn't dead.

I've traveled all over the world, and maybe it was Thailand, or Canada? can't remember...anyways. At the time I smoked, and bought cigarettes overseas. THOSE were graphic images. Black lungs, gunked up tracheostomy tubes, emaciated, cachetic victims of cancer or emphysema, tongue cancers and tumours...that kind of thing.

It didn't stop me from smoking, and it really didn't give me a "oh gee, maybe this is bad for me" thought because I knew it was bad for me. I think anyone with 1/2 a brain knows it's bad for them (maybe not, I don't know). I doubly knew it was bad for me because I'm a nurse.

But my original complaint with the pic had nothing to do with you, but the idea that an image meant to shock should be a shocking image. This isn't a shocking image. That's not your fault...

[sylvi]

11. Concur

Not only the coloration, but the chest incision looks more like a standard thoracotomy rather than the classic "Y" incision of a post-mortem. Plus it has the stain of betadine on it. Pretty sure they don't bother disinfecting the incision area prior to a post.

Oh, and he lacks the "O" sign.

[Stinky The Clown]

15. May I enquire as to what the fuck all does that have to do with tobacco?

[Selatius]

10. I'm sure the Founders intended the 1st Amendment to apply to corporations as well as human beings.

The Founders were profoundly stupid, indeed! They quickly forgot one of the aggravating reasons behind the Revolution was British Parliament, after much lobbying, granting the British East India Company a legal monopoly to operate in the Thirteen Colonies, giving them a free hand to charge whatever price consumers would pay. Stupid, indeed.

[gratuitous]

17. Citizen lives versus tobacco company profits

There is no "compelling interest" for the former, or any that exists is apparently outweighed by the latter.

Nobody is forcing tobacco companies to be tobacco companies. The state has not only the right but the obligation to protect its citizens from harmful products. Judge Leon called this one wrong.