Compelling Tobacco Companies to Carry Graphic Warnings on Cigarette Packages

Yesterday, US District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that an FDA regulation requiring that cigarette companies carry graphic images dramatizing the health risks on cigarette packages is probably unconstitutional. Renowned first amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, who argued the case for one of the major tobacco companies, hailed the decision on the free speech ground that government should not be able to compel companies to carry advocacy against their lawful products. Appearing on a Los Angeles public radio station with him, I argued that when 400,000 people die every year because of tobacco, adding more than seventy billion dollars of costs to our health system, government has a compelling interest in minimizing those costs, an interest that outweighs the free speech interest particularly since corporations deserve little protection, if any, and that commercial speech is low in the hierarchy of valued speech.  For an edited podcast of the broadcast, see http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2011/11/08/21315/graphics-cigarette-packages/

Comments

[Jimbino]

I have to side with Abrams. Sure the gummint has an interest in the health of its citizens just as it has in their freedom to choose their vices.

To say the gummint interest is strong enough to overcome these free speech rights is wrong, if only because the early death of smokers reduces the burdens of Social Security and Medicare to the gummint, so the gummint's argument runs the wrong way. It is the non-smoking propaganda that should be taxed or prohibited, because it increases costs to the nation.