Big Tobacco Sues FDA Over New Smoking Rules

Reynolds American Inc. and Lorillard Inc. are among the U.S. tobacco companies who have filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration claiming the agency’s new rules for marketing of cigarettes violates the companies’ constitutional rights to free speech.

The tobacco companies are crying foul over the decision by Congress in June to give the FDA authority over tobacco products. While the FDA will not have the power to ban cigarettes, it will be allowed to limit cigarette advertising to children and force tobacco companies to disclose the ingredients in their products, including nicotine content, which has been a closely guarded and controversial secret for decades.

Smoking is a leading cause of death in the United States and around the world, but the move putting the FDA in charge of tobacco products of the first time has the cigarette companies fuming.

“The law contains provisions that severely restrict the few remaining channels we have to communicate with adult tobacco consumers and, in our opinion, cannot be justified on any basis consistent with the demands of the First Amendment,” said Martin L. Holton III, senior vice president and general counsel for R.J. Reynolds, according to a report today in The Wall Street Journal.

According to the tobacco companies’ lawsuit, the FDA regulations are an unconstitutional infringement on their rights to market their products to adults and contain “severe provisions restricting or banning truthful speech, contrary to the requirements of the First Amendment.”

Ironically, Altria Group Inc., the parent company of Philip Morris, the world’s largest producer of tobacco products, supported the FDA regulations. The other tobacco companies say that’s because the legislation will all but assure that Philip Morris remains the top spot in global tobacco sales.

The tobacco companies’ lawsuit was filed in federal court in Kentucky.

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