Images of bloodless corpses and gasping babies would have to cover at least 50 percent of each cigarette pack under regulation proposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Although smoking rates have declined steadily for the past 40 years—down 52 percent since 1965—and every kindergartner can recite the evils of tobacco use, the FDA claims that current warnings are “ineffective.”
According to the agency, there’s a “worldwide consensus” that tobacco health warnings should feature pictures of dead people. At least that’s the practice in the progressive places cited by the agency, including the Cook Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Latvia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mongolia, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, and Romania.
Given teens’ current obsession with all things zombie, the gruesome images will likely prove highly popular as collector’s items.
Tales of the Red Tape is a special series on The Foundry that exposes some of the more egregious federal regulations that have multiplied by an unprecedented degree in the past year. Americans are now besieged by the torrent of do’s and don’ts that places an unsustainable burden on the economy and erodes Americans’ most fundamental freedoms. To learn more about this surge of red tape, visit The Heritage Foundation’s Regulations Page.
