Big Tobacco Sues New York City for Violation of First Amendment Rights

New York City has remained adamant when it comes to their no-smoking policies. Currently, you are not able to smoke in bars or restaurants throughout the entire state of New York, but the state is not stopping there when it comes to cracking down on big tobacco and encouraging smokers to give up the habit.

The New York City Health Department has recently developed three anti-smoking signs displaying a decaying tooth, diseased lungs and a damaged brain that depict the harmful effects smoking can have on the body. These ads will also have messages such as “smoking causes tooth decay” along with the number of a city helpline that will aid people in quitting smoking. It will also be mandated by the state that one of these ads are shown wherever cigarettes are sold and if they aren’t, New York cigarette retailers will face a $2,000 fine.

These signs are a first of their kind in the U.S., with New York being the only state to have gone so far to spread the word of the harmful effects of smoking and how to quit. But some people don’t agree with the signs and even think that they are unlawful–big tobacco companies for one.

Philip Morris USA, Lorillard Tobacco Company, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., along with two major retail trade groups and two convenience stores have filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court against New York City.

The lawsuit was filed last Wednesday and reads, “The government may not force private parties to carry messages beyond purely uncontroversial factual statements that are designed to prevent consumer deception. … The signs … do not describe the risks of smoking in purely factual terms. Instead, the signs force tobacco manufacturers and retailers to community vivid images at the point of sale.”

While what the lawsuit states may seem like a case of semantics, it goes further, saying that federal anti-smoking rules prevent local governments from interfering with cigarette advertising, making this new mandated imagery is considered unlawful by the same people who are trying to push these images into the shops and stores of all tobacco retailers.

But the government in New York are adamant on stopping people from continuing to smoke and are doing everything they can to make New York completely tobacco-free.

Elizabeth Thomas, the spokesperson for the New York City Law Department said, “We are confident that the health code provisions being challenged will withstand legal scrutiny.”

So what do you think? Is the New York City Department of Health not only free to, but also held to a standard where they should be interfering with tobacco sales and doing everything they can to warn potential customers of the harmful effects tobacco can have on your body? Or are they looking for an ideal smoke-free New York and trying to make sure it happens at all costs–even at the hands of doing something considered unlawful?

Keep in mind that tobacco customers are warned of the harmful effects of smoking each and every single time they purchase a pack of cigarettes. Every pack of cigarettes sold in this country contains the Surgeon General’s Warning on the side of the pack with a fact about the harmful effects of cigarettes, such as, “cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide.” It seems that what New York City is doing is trying to add imagery to the warnings people receive, knowing that people react far more drastically when susceptible to imagery than just words.

When all is said and done, I think people who smoke will continue to do so until they feel they are ready to quit or come to the decision to quit on their own. As the high failure rate of people who try to quit smoking tells us, people can only truly kick the habit when it is their own decision that they came up with on their own and for the betterment of their own lives. Tobacco customers right now know that each pack of cigarettes contains a Surgeon General’s Warning, but they choose not to even acknowledge its presence.

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About the Author: Holly Ord

In addition to being the Founder and Editor of Woman Tribune, Holly Ord is a freelance writer, web designer and developer, feminist activist and blogger, and hopeless video game addict. She lives in Northeastern Pennsylvania and has been blogging on liberal politics and gender equality on her personal website, Menstrual Poetry since 2007.

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