Government quits legal battle over graphic cigarette warnings

The Washington Post

The federal government, facing a court-imposed deadline and fierce opposition from the tobacco industry, has decided to abandon its legal fight to require cigarette makers to place large, graphic labels on their products warning of the dangers of smoking.

The decision marks a setback for the Food and Drug Administration, which two years ago announced that it would require tobacco manufacturers to include ghastly images on all cigarette packages. The proposed labels included pictures of disease-ridden lungs, the corpse of a smoker and a man exhaling smoke through a tracheotomy hole. They also included the number of a stop-smoking hotline, 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

The FDA said in a statement Tuesday that it will go back to the drawing board and “undertake research to support a new rulemaking consistent with the Tobacco Control Act,” the 2009 law that requires the agency to find ways to reduce the estimated 440,000 annual deaths attributable to tobacco use.

                                                                                                              -By Brady Dennis, Washington Post

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