GOVERNMENT-MANDATED CIGARETTE WARNING LABELS ARE HAZARDOUS TO HEALTH

Abstract

The 1964 official government report... triggered a cascade of events aimed at discouraging smoking. Now, 30 years later... it is time to acknowledge that our current policies to curb smoking simply are not working.

The warning labels, while presumably well intentioned, have done nothing to discourage smoking. Instead, they have provided extraordinary legal protection for the tobacco industry.

Industry attorneys can rely on the label for their nonsequitur defense in liability suits. They argue, in essence, that, "Cigarettes are not dangerous, but if they were, which they are not, the government `preempted' our responsibility to warn of those dangers."

If free market forces and an unfettered judicial system had prevailed, the cigarette would now be an anachronism simply because it would be too expensive to buy and too unprofitable to produce.