Judge Sets Date for Cigarette Warning Label Hearing
A U.S. judge said he will hear the tobacco industry’s request for a preliminary injunction on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) requirement that cigarette packages carry graphic warning labels on September 21.
The labels are designed to warn consumers about the risks of smoking, Reuters reports. Judge Richard Leon said he hopes to have a decision in October. Any decision by the judge is likely to be appealed, the article notes.
Five tobacco companies are suing the federal government over the labels, which are scheduled to be on all packages by the fall of 2012. The manufacturers claim the labels violate First Amendment protections for commercial speech.
The new cigarette labels carry graphic images of the consequences of smoking, including diseased lungs and rotting teeth. The new labels are a result of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which gave the FDA authority to regulate the content, marketing and sale of tobacco products.
The tobacco companies said they need a quick ruling on the labels because they would need to start gearing up at the end of this year, and spend millions of dollars, to comply with the FDA’s requirements. Reuters notes attorneys at the Justice Department said the money was a small fraction of their net sales.
I sure hope that karma is swift and fierce for those in the death-by-tobacco industry who are fighting this legislation of their cancer/heart disease/stroke sticks. Their complete disregard for human lives in order to make a lot of money is staggering. How obscene! And their attorneys? Despicable, also.
Why are these mass-murders not in prison now? I copied this from another site:
Tobacco industry guilty of fraud and racketeering, again.
by Jonathan Foulds, MA, MAppSci, PhD
Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously upheld the historic decision of U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler that the tobacco industry had and continues to engage in a massive, decades long campaign to defraud the American public.
The three judge Appeals Court panel affirmed Judge Kessler’s 2006 ruling that the cigarette manufacturers engaged in a 50 year massive racketeering scheme that included falsely denying the adverse health effects of their products, falsely denying that nicotine is addictive, falsely representing that “light” and “low-tar” cigarettes present fewer health risks, falsely denying that they marketed to kids, and falsely denying that secondhand smoke causes disease.
The Court of Appeals also upheld Judge Kessler’s original findings that:
1. There is a substantial likelihood of future violations of the law by the tobacco industry
2. The tobacco companies should publish corrective statements and packet inserts on each of the topics for which they were found to have committed fraud.
Why are they not in prison? Why are they not in Prison? Why are they not in Prison?
They have killed more people than Hitler. They have cost America more than war. They have been found guilty over and over. They knew it was killing people all along and lied about it. They are still trying to addict our children. Why are these pushers not in prison now???