Nanny State PING!
Posted on 08/25/2012 7:57:44 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A US court on Friday shot down orders to slap graphic anti-tobacco messages on cigarette packs, saying the government overstepped its authority by trying to "browbeat" smokers into quitting.
In line with campaigns in several other nations, the United States planned from September 22 to require images on cigarette packs including a man smoking through a hole in his throat and a body with chest staples on an autopsy table.
In a 2-1 decision, the US Court of Appeals in Washington said that the images planned on cigarette packs were not necessarily false but they went beyond "pure attempts to convey information to consumers."
"They are unabashed attempts to evoke emotion (and perhaps embarrassment) and browbeat consumers into quitting," Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who was appointed by former president George W. Bush, wrote for the majority.
She also said that the US Food and Drug Administration "has not provided a shred of evidence" that graphic warnings directly reduced rates of smoking.
Tobacco companies had filed suit against the federal agency, saying that the cigarette labels violated the US Constitution's First Amendment which prohibits any law that restricts freedom of speech.
Brown wrote that the government "can certainly require that consumers be fully informed about the dangers of hazardous products."
"But this case raises novel questions about the scope of the government's authority to force the manufacturer of a product to go beyond making purely factual and accurate commercial disclosures and undermine its own economic interest," she wrote.
Brown said the court faced the question of how much leeway to grant the government "to convey the state's subjective -- and perhaps even ideological -- view that consumers should reject this otherwise legal, but disfavored, product."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Nanny State PING!
Gross pictures don’t work.
They have them in Canada and Canadian smokers have simply resorted to making collections of them.
But browbeating is the Chicago way. And if that doesn't work they move to the kneecaps next.
the government makes more money on a pack of cigs then the company does.
they make more money on a gallon of gas then the oil companies do.
what the citizens need to do is just shut down every company, industry, whatever and not go to work one day a week, and see how the politicians will respond.
let them go without 20% of their income every week and see what mayhem that would cause. might get a little more respect for the taxpayer and the corporations that fuel the country.
That would be a revolution.
Blessings, bobo
BTW, i do not smoke, and i do not even drive a car.
I have no dog in the hunt, except i know right from wrong.
it’s all about fairness and freedom.
Blessings, bobo
It would fit well with the Goth mood.
Thanks for the ping!
I think a picture of broccoli would be kinda cool, as would one of mona lisa.
Only if they wallpaper Planned Parenthood with pictures of aborted babies, I mean, “fetuses.”
If they had won that, we would then be seeing pictures of 700-pound people on fast food wrappers, cookies, cake mix, sugar, candy, etc.
Of course, then the fat people would sue for numerous reasons.
Ruined livers and car wrecks on alcohol.
Then lawn mowers with pictures of people missing a hand, x-rays of heads with nails in them on nail guns, pictures of bloody car wrecks on the car lots, etc.
Anti-Ciggies aren’t gonna give up.
Next they’ll ask that slices of diseased lungs be attached to cigarette packages.
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