The graphic warnings are a dramatic improvement over the current text-only warnings, which haven’t been updated since 1984 and are now barely noticed by smokers or kids thinking about smoking. They are supported by extensive scientific evidence showing that graphic warnings are far more effective at communicating the health risks of smoking than text-only warnings. And they will help the United States catch up to the 120 countries that have adopted this best-practice strategy to reduce tobacco use and save lives.
The 2009 Tobacco Control Act required graphic warnings covering the top half of the front and back of cigarette packs and 20 percent of cigarette advertising and gave the FDA until June 22, 2011, to issue a final rule requiring such warnings. While the FDA met that deadline, the specific graphic warnings required by the FDA were struck down in August 2012 by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which ruled 2-1 that the proposed warnings violated the First Amendment. That ruling only applied to the specific images proposed by the FDA and did not address the law’s underlying requirement.
Ruling in a separate case in March 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the law’s requirement for graphic warnings, finding that this provision did not violate the First Amendment. That court found the graphic warnings “are reasonably related to the government’s interest in preventing consumer deception and are therefore constitutional.” The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a tobacco industry appeal of this ruling.
Taken together, these two federal court decisions mean the FDA is still legally obligated to require graphic health warnings, and the agency is free to use different images than those struck down by the D.C. Circuit in 2012. The FDA stated in March 2013 that it planned to issue a new rule requiring graphic warnings, but failed to do so before today.
At least 120 countries and jurisdictions now require graphic cigarette warnings. Prior to 2009, when Congress passed the Tobacco Control Act, only 18 countries required graphic warnings, showing how far behind the rest of the world the U.S has fallen over the past 10 years.