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FDA and Tobacco Advertising
RoosterTX
Posts: 16
In a well reported decision, the Justice Department and the FDA decided not to appeal the March 2012 decision by the DC appellate court that labeling restrictions on cigarette packaging violated Constitutional prohibitions against free speech. In the short term, this means no disgusting pictures on cigarette packages.
Since I no longer smoke cigarettes, I could care less about the impact on the cigarette industry, but in the long term, I wonder what the liberty hating federal government will come up with next.
One of my favorite parts of cigar smoking is trying new cigards, and I keep a scrap book of all my cigar bands as a way of keeping track of what I smoked and what I liked. Some day I am going to start turning these saved cigar rings into framed wall art, but that is another topic. To say the least, I think cigar rings are a work of art and should be appreciated as such.
I think this decision is also important in light of the recent Australian rules that apply draconian limits to how all tobacco can be marketed down under. While the cigars won't change, Australian cigar rings are going the way of the dodo bird and, to me, that is a shame.
As a lawyer, I love to keep track of how the law affects my hobbies. Specifically, I have watched with great interest the last few days as the Texas legislature finally worked out a system where brewpubs and smaller breweries can self distribute and sell beer off site. This might be the first signs of a major craft brewing wave to sweep Texas. Houston and Austin have some wonderful craft breweries, and I look forward to the chance to finally get to sample some of their products I otherwise would not have been able to try without a short road trip.
To wrap this post up, I thank God we are Americans and the rule of law still applies. Government regulations tend to strangle the market (rather than help anyone but the biggest companies with the best lobbyists) and it is good to see someone out the still pays attention to our freedoms.
It will probably be at least a year before the FDA tries to unleash their new advertising rules, and hopefully those will continue to leave cigars alone and let us appreciate the full beauty of a cigar, including the tradition of gorgeous packaging that extends at least the past century.
Since I no longer smoke cigarettes, I could care less about the impact on the cigarette industry, but in the long term, I wonder what the liberty hating federal government will come up with next.
One of my favorite parts of cigar smoking is trying new cigards, and I keep a scrap book of all my cigar bands as a way of keeping track of what I smoked and what I liked. Some day I am going to start turning these saved cigar rings into framed wall art, but that is another topic. To say the least, I think cigar rings are a work of art and should be appreciated as such.
I think this decision is also important in light of the recent Australian rules that apply draconian limits to how all tobacco can be marketed down under. While the cigars won't change, Australian cigar rings are going the way of the dodo bird and, to me, that is a shame.
As a lawyer, I love to keep track of how the law affects my hobbies. Specifically, I have watched with great interest the last few days as the Texas legislature finally worked out a system where brewpubs and smaller breweries can self distribute and sell beer off site. This might be the first signs of a major craft brewing wave to sweep Texas. Houston and Austin have some wonderful craft breweries, and I look forward to the chance to finally get to sample some of their products I otherwise would not have been able to try without a short road trip.
To wrap this post up, I thank God we are Americans and the rule of law still applies. Government regulations tend to strangle the market (rather than help anyone but the biggest companies with the best lobbyists) and it is good to see someone out the still pays attention to our freedoms.
It will probably be at least a year before the FDA tries to unleash their new advertising rules, and hopefully those will continue to leave cigars alone and let us appreciate the full beauty of a cigar, including the tradition of gorgeous packaging that extends at least the past century.
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Comments
Don't believe this? Just take a look at how the oil an railroad industries were at the beginning of the 19th century, set up as monopolistic trusts that stamped out any meaningful competition. The situation was so bad that it took a pro-busines Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, to take these companies on.
Take a look at the telephone company until the late 70s. Until then, if you wanted phone service you could choose----AT&T. Or AT&T. Or AT&T. Or a subsidiary controlled by AT&T. It was the 'government bureaucracy' that finally broke up AT&T, allowing, for the first time, users to actually OWN phones (instead of renting them). Government controls on AT&T and other large national telecommunications allowed for the gigantic boom in telecommunications services that allowed that cellular industry to emerge as a competitor to land lines, and for awhile, there was a huge amount of competition--until Clinton and Bush turned away from regulation and allowed the huge spate of mergers that have essentially reduced the number of phone companies to half a dozen or so where there used to be dozens.
Same with the banking industry. Until the late 90s, there were very few 'national' banks; most were either local or regional players. But Clinton and Bush let mergers ran amock and soon the entities that became Bank of America, Wachovia, Citi and Chase had sucked up most regional banks, leaving banking customers with either overpriced, high-fee national banks or local banks with lower levels of capabilities (ATMs, debit cards) to choose from.
Lack of government regulation and oversight allowed the banks to destroy the economy. Lack of regulations and enforcement resulted in BP using substandard safety practices resulting the gulf oil spill disaster. Lack of government regulation and oversight have allowed thousands of companies to pollute private and public lands, resulting in the destruction of natural habitat, contaminated water supplies, and high levels of cancer and other diseases among people living close to these areas.
Personally, given that the nature of business is to look solely after its own short-term instruments without any regard to the negative effect of their actions on consumers and their communities, I'll trust the government to protect my rights to safe drinking water and food and protection against predatory lending practices or price qouging, since business can't be trusted to protect these rights at all.
But, gov't is a business too and its nature is to look after its own power.
You are right, a government's job is to protect your rights. However, regulations very quickly start to remove those same rights. I think that most gov't regulation take away more than they protect.
Do you really believe that the people who write up those reg's are that much better than someone running a private business? Its not the business... a business is made of and run by people, its not the free market... a free market is when people come together and voluntarily trade goods and services. You're talking about a moral problem, human nature, and those same people work in government as well.
I don't disagree with your assessment of historical abuses of power, but am just pointing out: It's not a business or market problem, it's a people problem, and you cannot regulate people into moral beings.
credit unions.
and my regional bank is fee free. just gotta look. they are out there. saying the banks were not regulated and that caused the banks to fail is ridiculous. the real situation with that has many many more sides and influences. it can be traced for almost 30 years. there was a TON of regulation on the banking system (and still is). the regulations that caused the crisis were not good regulations. just because something is "regulated" does not mean that those regulations are good. there are good and bad regulations. in the case of the housing crisis, the regulations were bad.
of course this also does not include the politics that were sculpting the way the banks operate. that was also a huge factor. no, that was just stupidity.
BP knew the right thing to do and had done it MANY times before without the hand of the government being involved but they chose that time not to drill the relief well. it kicked them square in the ass
BP paid for it.
as well they should. but not anymore. actually this is one i agree with to a degree.
those are not rights. those are goods. (water is a debate)
there is a huge difference.
price gouging does not exist. if demand for a product goes through the roof (due to a major event, catastrophe, disaster, etc) so does the price until people feel that it is not worth paying. since price is so high there will be people who want in on that action and they will come in with their product to fill the demand. the more people that come in to fill that demand the more product there is the lower the price goes. its called "market prices" or "supply and demand" and is usually covered in high school economics 101.
I define the rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to encompass my right to not have my drinking water polluted by companies, my consumer choices limited to a few companies who have merged to form monopolies, the safety of my food compromised by companies who cut corners and use sloppy and dangerous practices; my ability to work in a safe environment where my employer can't force me to work in a sweat shop or take on unwarranted risk; my ability to read newspapers, listen to the radio, or watch TV stations knowing that neither Rupert Murdoch or George Soros is allowed to own all media outlets in a city (a right that the FCC is about to abolish); the right to be able to go to the beach and swim in clean waters knowing that BP doesn't automatically have the freedom to build oil rigs wherever they want; the right to know that when I fly, the airline is required to follow strict federal safety guidelines when building planes and that all air traffic isn't allowed to fly pell mell however they want to, but that it is managed in a safe manner by a federally mandated air traffic control system.
See, I don't believe that the business of America is business. Nor do I believe that businesses automatically work in the best interests of consumers, their employees, or those in their communities. I also believe that small businesses are far likely to be polluters and rule breakers than larger companies (nearly every Superfund site in the country was created by a small company, not a large multinational). I do believe that the rights of citizens to live and raise their children in a healthy environment where they won't get ripped off because of a lack of choice are far more important than those of business. Because history has shown, over and over and over and over and over again, that business will act solely in its own interests if it isn't regulated, even if their greed ends up destroying the resources they depend on for their income (destruction of fishing stocks on the East Coast, near extinction of the buffalo, total extinction of the passenger pigeon, near destruction of the beaver population of North America, anyone?)
You're walking a very slippery slope. Comparing regulations on environmental issues, trusts and banking to tobacco and alcohol regulations is apples and oranges.
First, you're absolutely correct about anti-trust but you do not understand it. Anti-trust protects the consumer by preventing collusion. Collusion by either one company buying up all the competition or by companies agreeing to fix the system. This encourages competition but does not guarantee it. If one company makes a product so much better than anyone else's that no one else can compete this should be allowed not discouraged. As soon as that company becomes complacent another company will start up and compete. Regulation is necessary to prevent the large company from buying and killing off any upstarts, it is not the governments place to ensure there is competition. That is no longer regulation, it is the bureaucracy so many of us complain about. Microsoft is a great example of this. The anti-trust laws that were in place worked, albeit slowly at times, to keep Microsoft at bay. The government tried to write new rules and enforce existing one in creative ways to guarantee that microsoft had competition. At one point a prosecuter even stated in court it was Microsoft's duty under anti-trust law to ensure they had competition. WHAT?!?! In the end the natural course of economics took place. Microsoft became complacent and Apple and Google have stepped up and are stealing market share. The consumer wins.
This is ultra-simplification of one of the most complex series of laws in the world. But that is the original and main purpose of anti-trust law.
Your assumption is that businesses do what is best for businesses and not for the consumer, is true but misguided. The business needs the consumer.
Some regulation is necessary. I whole heartedly agree with requiring foods and drinks to have nutriotional info on them and list all their ingredients. I even agree with warning labels. On cigarettes, drugs, hell even food. However, once the information has been provided it is not the governments place to step in and say well sugar causes obseity so we're going to limit the amount of sugar allowed in one package. No, the government has ensured that I know that sugar makes me fat, that there are 39g of sugar in 12 ounces of coke. If I choose to buy a 64 oz soda that's my choice. If you wanted to say that anything over 12 ounces needed a warning label saying that excess sugar causes diabetes have at. But be reasonable the label should not take up half the bottle.
Consumers determine what companies produce and what stores carry by their purchases. A few years ago Splenda was all the rage and all the soda manufacturers came out with Splenda based products. We can debate all day long whether or not Splenda is better than other artificial sweetners or sugar. HOWEVER, the consumer spoke they didn't sell enough. Trying finding a Splenda sweetened soda today. (I drink Pepsi One because it is the last one out there with caffeine in it and its hard to find). Would regulation requring companies to use Splenda instead of Aspartame work? Certainly but isn't it a loss of freedom to require a business to provide a product that consumers enjoy less when that product is legal? If aspartame was soundly determined to be deadly it would be banned. It is not. It may be unhealthy in large amounts. I choose to stay away from it, that's my right.
Environmental issues are completely different. Many, not all, companies will do what is cheapest for them. Some companies are naturally environmentally responsible and use that as a marketing tool. But many other are all about what creates the biggest profits. The consumers control what is sold to them with their purchases. Have a poor sanitation problem at your dog food plant, kill a few dogs, sales drop. Now this company launches a campaign on how their food is safer, healthier, better, etc.
On the other side of this you have the company dumping toxic waste into a drainage ditch out back. Maybe CNN or NBC nightly news runs a story on it and the company loses 1 or 2 %, does that outweigh the cost of of cleaning the process up? No. Regulation in these areas are needed. However, they need to be reasonable and based on good sound science. Too many times these are based on knee jerk reactions and go too far.
Finally, many of the regulations we are seeing being pushed now-a-days are health based. Smoking, foods, drink, etc. Many of us complain that big brother is telling us they know what's better for us than we do. To some extent that's true. However, more and more people are reliant on the government for healthcare. Starting next year even more will be. The government is now in the business of our health. The are no longer just trying to regulate companies to make sure they don't kill us or pollute our environment. They now have to pay for our bad decisions. So they are going to do what is in their best fiscal interest. Freedom be damned. Who's regulating them??
Note that nowhere is it your "right" to demand a wide selection of competitvely priced goods. Is that desirable for consumers? Absolutely. But, only a business acting in its own self-interest will produce these goods. It's not anyone's right to have these goods automatically provided.
I was responding to the main argument that OP was making, which was:
"Government regulations tend to strangle the market (rather than help anyone but the biggest companies with the best lobbyists) and it is good to see someone out the still pays attention to our freedoms."
I don't how see how government regulations on cigarette advertising is taking away our freedom to buy and smoke them, any more than ingredient labels on foods take away our right to buy them and eat them any more reguations requiring alcohol content labels on beer and liquor take away our right to buy them and eat them any more than the ten minutes of government required disclosures of the potential side effects of perscripton drugs you hear in every commercial take away of freedom to use them. The government is not outlawing business's right to make and sell them or the consumer's right to buy these products. It is restricting business's rights to advertise products any way the want to. I'm quite fine with that. Matter of fact, I wish there were MORE regulations to require all the snake oil health and homeopathic garbage manufacturers from making claims unproven by any kind of peer-reviewed research. But that's just me.
You may favor or disfavor certain kinds of regulations, but this the OP's statement wasn't about which regulations we like and dislike. It was a generalized argument that all government regulations strangle the market (which the examples I give up and in previous message clearly demonstrate that they don't) and that regulations stifle freedoms (which is a matter of interpretation; they don't stifle consumers' rights and in many cases expand their choices; if you own a business that makes certain kinds of harmful products, like cigarettes, your freedom to advertise how you want is limited, but your freedom to sell them isn't).
Anyway, since this area of the forum is supposed to be about cigars, and this discussion really belongs in the "non-cigar" discussion area, not here, I'm not going to post any more messages in this topic while it remains here. So feel free to have the last word.
If someone wants to start it up again in the other section, or (good lord!) gGrab everything that's been said in this one and post it to a new discussion in the other section, I'd be happy to continue this debate, since it's a good one.
So about them see-gars... Mmm!