Tobacco

  • Read more: Tobacco Companies Must Punch Selves in Face, Court Orders

    Tobacco Companies Must Punch Selves in Face, Court Orders

    By Christopher Robertson The Washington Post covers a new order by DC district court judge Gladys Kessler, arising out of an old RICO case brought by the federal government, requiring that the tobacco companies publish advertisements to confess publicly that they previously lied about the safety of smoking and manipulated cigarettes to make them more…

  • Read more: Using the Taxing Power for Public Health

    Using the Taxing Power for Public Health

    By Scott Burris In a Perspective in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, Michelle Mello and Glenn Cohen, both professors at Harvard, write about the prospects for using the constitutional Taxing Power to adopt innovative laws to advance public health objectives.  Cueing off the Supreme Court’s decision in the Affordable Care Act litigation, Mello…

  • Read more: Tobacco Labeling and the Ethics of Persuasion

    Tobacco Labeling and the Ethics of Persuasion

    by Nadia N. Sawicki The D.C. Circuit’s recent decision vacating the FDA’s graphic labeling requirements has prompted a flood of valuable commentary about compelled speech doctrine, including Richard Epstein’s, below.  While analysis of the First Amendment issues is important, I view the R.J. Reynolds case instead as an example of how emphasis on formal legal…

  • Read more: Making Sense of Tobacco Regulation: The First and Fifth Amendment Challenges

    Making Sense of Tobacco Regulation: The First and Fifth Amendment Challenges

    [posted on behalf of Richard Epstein] The entire question of the FDA’s tobacco regulation is likely to spur extended commentary, given the split of opinions between the D.C. Circuit, which knocked out the packaging labels by a divided vote in RJ Reynolds v. FDA, and the earlier decision in the Sixth Circuit, that sustained the regulation. …