Mandating Graphic Health Warnings on Cigarette Packages

Australia recently began requiring plain packaging and graphic health warnings on products produced by its $10 billion tobacco industry. This new government regulation will require 75 percent of the area on the front of the cigarette packs to have health warnings, along with a graphic image. Needless to say, these images are very striking: a gangrenous foot, a cancerous tongue, a toilet stained with bloody urine, and a skeletal man named Bryan who is dying of lung cancer.

As one would expect, this shocking method to deter consumers from smoking has manufacturers such as British American Tobacco, Philip Morris, Imperial Tobacco, and Japan Tobacco International fighting back in court, claiming that it is an infringement on their intellectual property and unduly restrictive of the tobacco trade. Historically, the United Sates was the first country to put health warnings from the Surgeon General on cigarette packs. And in 2001, Canada was the first country to implement what one might consider an aggressive graphic public health strategy. Australia is now the 47th country to regulate packaging-but its regulations are the most draconian to date. More regulations are expected around the world's markets, because reducing premature deaths due to smoking is a high public-health priority. However, tobacco is a lucrative industry, and tobacco companies are working on strategies to contest and circumvent these government regulations.

Discussion Questions

1. What should be the role of government in driving healthy choices?

2. In the United States of America, we have a specific right to free speech. Do you think it is OK to have such regulations? Could such regulations become a "slippery slope"?