Supreme Court Rejects Cigarette Label Warning Challenge

The tobacco industry was just dealt a crushing defeat by the Supreme Court.  

This week, the court decided to decline a case to challenge proposed graphic warning labels on cigarettes.  

The order came down on Monday.  

We Decline 

If you smoke, your cigarette packs are about to change rather dramatically.  

The FDA has proposed new, very graphic warning labels on smoking products.  

AP reported, “They include pictures of smoke-damaged lungs, feet blackened by diminished blood flow and a picture of a woman with a large growth on her neck and the caption ‘WARNING: Smoking causes head and neck cancer.’” 

Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds argued that the labels were representing extreme cases by the FBI.  

They continued that the labels they would be using were in extreme cases, and that patients would likely go to the doctors to have the issue addressed.

The FDA countered that the pictures were a realistic representation of the medical conditions caused by smoking.  

The United States is actually behind the times on this, as there are more than 100 other countries already featuring these more graphic warning labels.

In the United States, these labels have not been updated since 1984, and I can remember how big of a deal it was back then.  

At the time, many people thought pulling advertising and the warning labels would end the industry, but it just keeps plugging along.  

I would note, however, the industry has lost considerable business since its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s.  

According to reports, over the last 60 years, the industry has seen a decline.  

In 1965, nearly 43% of Americans smoked, but that number has fallen to less than 12% in recent years.  

Even so, there are still hundreds of billions of cigarettes sold every year in this country, which comes out to nearly eight billion packs.  

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are more than 480,000 deaths every year attributed to smoking.