A federal judge struck down an impending FDA requirement that would have placed large graphic images depicting the effects of smoking on all cigarette packs.
The FDA had selected nine photos to be displayed along with a hot line for anyone looking for help to stop smoking. Among the nine images is a color photo of a man on a coroner’s table after an autopsy. another shows a man exhaling smoke from his tracheotomy hole. While it is certainly right that the dangers of smoking tobacco are a great burden on this country’s already fragile health care system, having the government involved in the consumption of legal products can only lead to more regulations that are an impediment to the prosperity of America’s businesses.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s 29 page opinion contained, in part:
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.
Judge Leon also stated that tobacco companies, who were to be forced to show the large graphic images on roughly half of the pack’s surface, would likely win if and when a lawsuit were brought against the FDA.
It is the never-ending creep of governmental intervention that has this country divided, and a so-called “Nanny State” is inevitable without the checks and balances provided by the Constitution.