The tobacco industry has never been bashful about fighting back against attempts to regulate the promotion of its deadly, addictive products. The latest is an effort to derail new regulations requiring large health warnings on cigarette packages by making baseless First Amendment claims. There is evidence that the current surgeon general warnings on the side of cigarette packs are ineffective and virtually invisible. So Congress passed a law in 2009 requiring that large graphical and text warnings about smoking's harm cover the top half of the front and back of cigarette packs beginning in September 2012. The Food and Drug Administration then chose nine dramatic images to replace the current text-only warnings, including a cadaver on a slab and another of a man with smoke coming out of a tracheotomy hole. A health warning does not have to be ineffective to be constitutional. The real message, of course, is backed by abundant evidence: smoking kills.
