In what does not appear to be an April Fool's Joke (because it's November) or an Onion satire (because it's in the Washington Post), the FDA is proposing a set of shockingly graphic warning labels for cigarette packages.
The Health and Human Services Department, which announced the new initiative, called the new warnings "the most significant change in more than 25 years" in cigarette packages and advertising. The warnings will cover half of a cigarette pack.
Proposed image as it would appear on a cigarette package. (FDA)One warning, for example, is, "Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease." It is shown with the picture of the feet of a dead body in a morgue. Another, "Cigarettes cause strokes and heart disease," shows a man apparently having a heart attack.
The Food and Drug Administration, using new powers to regulate tobacco products, outlined the plan to require the new more prominent warning statements and color graphic images "depicting the negative health consequences of smoking."
Talk about flexing your regulatory muscles! The image at the top of this post is one of the actual proposed labels. Visit the FDA website to see the full set.
It is, frankly, hard to believe that any administration would try to do this. It is so bold as to be almost unbelievable. Maybe the president finally got sick of people questioning his liberal street cred.
Under Obama and Sebelius, the FDA actually intends to force tobacco companies to put images of cancerous tumors and dead bodies on their cigarette packages as a warning about what can happen to you if you smoke. Sebelius called it a "significant change" in cigarette packaging. That is an understatement to say the least.
Imagine Anheuser Bush being forced to put pictures of a man your dad's age, passed out drunk in his own vomit on the bathroom floor, on every case of Bud Light. Or, imagine a picture of a morbidly obese man with his exposed belly pouring over his waistband on every package of Twinkies. Now imagine the hissy fit that must be taking place in the C-Suite of every tobacco company this morning.
Good for the administration for having the guts to pick a fight this huge with an industry as rich and influential as Big Tobacco.
Frustratingly mandatory caveat: I hope we don't see Robert Gibbs come out later today to walk this back.