WASHINGTON — A judge on Monday blocked a federal requirement that would have begun forcing tobacco companies next year to put graphic images, including dead and diseased smokers, on their cigarette packages.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that it is likely the cigarette makers will succeed in a lawsuit to block the standard. He stopped the requirement until after the lawsuit is resolved, which could take years.
A similar case is pending before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Leon found that the nine graphic images approved in June by the Food and Drug Administration go beyond conveying the facts about the health risks of smoking and constitute advocacy — a critical distinction in a case over free speech.
The packaging would have included color images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat; a pair of diseased lungs next to a pair of healthy lungs; and a cadaver on a table with post-autopsy chest staples.
“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,” Leon wrote in his 29-page opinion. The Associated Press
