U.S. Will Push to Have Graphic Warnings on Cigarettes

March 1st, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

THURSDAY, March 1 (HealthDay News) — Following a move by a U.S.
federal judge to block a government mandate calling for graphic
anti-smoking images on cigarette packaging, Obama Administration officials
said they are determined to fight back and keep the rule in place.

“This Administration is determined to do everything we can to warn
young people about the dangers of smoking, which remains the leading cause
of preventable death in America,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services said in a statement issued late Wednesday. “This public health
initiative will be an effective tool in our efforts to stop teenagers from
starting in the first place and taking up this deadly habit. We are
confident that efforts to stop these important warnings from going forward
will ultimately fail.”

The proposed requirement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,
which was set to kick in this September, would have emblazoned cigarette
packaging with images of people dying from smoking-related disease, mouth
and gum damage linked to smoking and other gruesome portrayals of the
harms of smoking.

But U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, of the U.S. District Court in the
District of Columbia, ruled on Wednesday that the FDA mandate violated the
U.S. Constitution’s free speech amendment.

Back in November, Leon said it was likely that the tobacco industry
would succeed in a lawsuit to overturn the requirement. So, he temporarily
blocked the FDA initiative until the court case could be resolved, which
might take years, the Associated Press reported.

Leon called the FDA mandate a violation of tobacco companies’ right to
free speech.

Anti-smoking advocates took issue with Leon’s latest decision.

“Today’s ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon blocking
implementation of new, graphic cigarette warning labels is not surprising
given his earlier decision to issue a preliminary injunction against the
warnings,” Matthew Myers, president for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free
Kids, said in a statement released Wednesday evening.

“We’re pleased that the U.S. Department of Justice has already appealed
the earlier ruling and is working to preserve this critical requirement of
the landmark 2009 law giving the Food and Drug Administration the
authority to regulate tobacco products. If allowed to stand, Judge Leon’s
rulings would make it impossible to implement any effective warning
labels.”

Oral arguments on the appeal have been scheduled for April, according
to a spokesman for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

The FDA has contended that the benefits to the public of highlighting
the dangers of smoking outweigh the tobacco industry’s free speech
rights.

Leon said last fall that the nine graphic images, which were approved
by the FDA, did more than just convey facts about the health risks of
smoking — they took an advocacy stance, a key distinction in a
free-speech case.

“It is abundantly clear from viewing these images that the emotional
response they were crafted to induce is calculated to provoke the viewer
to quit, or never to start smoking — an objective wholly apart from
disseminating purely factual and uncontroversial information,” Leon wrote
in his 29-page opinion issued Nov. 7.

The nine proposed images, designed to fill the top half of all
cigarette packs, have stirred controversy since the concept first emerged
in 2009.

One image shows a man’s face and a lighted cigarette in his hand, with
smoke escaping from a hole in his neck — the result of a tracheotomy.
The caption reads “Cigarettes are addictive.” Another image shows a mother
holding a baby as smoke swirls about them, with the warning: “Tobacco
smoke can harm your children.”

A third image depicts a distraught woman with the caption: “Warning:
Smoking causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers.”

A fourth picture shows a mouth with smoked-stained teeth and an open
sore on the lower lip. “Cigarettes cause cancer,” the caption reads.

The labels are a part of the requirements of the Family Smoking
Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed into law in 2009 by President
Barack Obama. For the first time, the law gave the FDA significant control
over tobacco products.

Smoking is the leading cause of early and preventable death in the
United States, resulting in some 443,000 fatalities each year, according
to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and costs almost
$200 billion every year in medical costs and lost productivity.

Over the last decade, countries as varied as Canada, Australia, Chile,
Brazil, Iran and Singapore, among others, have adopted graphic warnings on
tobacco products.

More information

For more on the warning labels and to see the images, visit this FDA website.