Tag: Cigarettes

Person smoking cigarette.

Graphic Warnings on Cigarettes: Public Health vs. Corporate Speech

Laura Karas Leave a comment

By Laura Karas

The latest attempt of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make a dent in the country’s intractable tobacco problem is a set of color graphic warnings that will appear on cigarette packages and advertisements beginning in June of 2021.

The legal battle surrounding the graphic warnings and other attempts to regulate commercial speech in the food and drug context illustrate the courts’ enduring failure to appreciate the full extent and substantiality of the government’s interest in promoting public health.

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Several vaping devices on a table

E-Cigarette Laws that Work for Everyone

Daniel G. Aaron Leave a comment

By Daniel Aaron

The Trump Administration has retreated from proposed tobacco regulations that experts generally agree would benefit public health. The regulations would have included a ban on flavored e-cigarettes, a favorite of children who use e-cigarettes. Currently millions of youth are estimated to be addicted to e-cigarettes.

The rules also could have reduced nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels. Nicotine is the addicting substance largely responsible for continued smoking. If nicotine were “decoupled” from smoking, smokers might turn to other sources of nicotine, rather than continuing to smoke. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing about 500,000 Americans each year, or just about the number of Americans who died in World War I and World War II combined.

Part of the difficulty in regulating e-cigarettes is that, unlike cigarettes, they offer benefits and harms that differ across generations. This concern is called intergenerational equity. How can a solution be crafted that serves all Americans?

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