Tobacco companies and freedom of expression

I was reading Dave Melson's blog entry which described his concerns over limits to free expression in the light of the current court case in which tobacco companies are attempting to have loosened recently imposed advertising and packaging restrictions.

I share his concerns, but feel this might be a special case...

This was Allen Carr north America's response...

"I totally understand the almost visceral reaction to any potential threat to freedom of expression, but with their guiding principles of fairness and equality, if the Founding Fathers had seen the way that First Amendment rights had been so egregiously abused by certain people, institutions, industries and companies, they wouldn't have hesitated for a second to legislate against them.

The tobacco industry is surely one such case: Smoking has a truly catastrophic human, financial and societal cost. An estimated 400,000 Americans die from smoking-related diseases every year (part of the nearly 6m worldwide) to say nothing of the 8m Americans living with smoking-related health problems, the millions of loved ones left behind or the estimated $100bn spent every year on caring for smokers.

The links between smoking and cancer and heart disease were established in the early 'sixties. For FORTY YEARS the tobacco industry publicly and energetically denied, while privately acknowledging, these and hundreds of other scientific findings. Big Tobacco have used their First Amendment rights to deceive, distort, deny and lie with stunning effect.

We have a right to bear arms, but if you are convicted of a gun crime, then you are likely going to be prohibited from owning a gun in the future. I think most people would agree that this makes sense.

Likewise, if someone has been found to continually and cynically use their First Amendment rights over a forty-year period to promote an addictive product they know to cause death and disease, why wouldn't it be equally correct that their right to free expression be limited and subject to oversight in the specific areas they have been found guilty of lying in?

Don't get me wrong, this is not a sanction I would take lightly, but I feel that special cases sometimes need extraordinary actions, and in this case I sense the punishment very much fits the crime, so to speak.

Incidentally, all this bill really does is to bring the US a little closer to where every other developed nation is on tobacco control already. The Australians, Canadian and Europeans have had these warnings and this type of advertising restrictions for years.

By the tobacco industry's deeds shall ye know them. Sometimes you know the right side of an argument just by seeing who is on the other side..."