美国烟草公司抗议烟盒图像警告标志

Five tobacco companies have sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over a new law that would force them to place graphic¹ health warnings on their cigarette packets.

美国五家烟草公司联合起诉食品和药物管理局，他们被该局强迫在烟盒上放置图像健康警告。

The new health labels include images of individuals with heart disease and rotten teeth
The firms argue the plan violates their constitutional right to free speech, as it requires firms to promote the government's anti-smoking message.

The FDA has not commented on the lawsuit².

The new warnings will be required on cigarette packs from September 2012.

'Depressed³, afraid'

RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard Tobacco, Commonwealth⁴ Brands, Liggett Group and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco said they filed their suit against the FDA late on Tuesday in an effort to delay enforcement of the new law.

RJ Reynolds brands include Camel and Winston, while Lorillard brands include Newport and True.

In their 41-page complaint, the five companies say the new labels would illegally force them to make consumers "depressed, discouraged and afraid" to buy their products.

"The government can require warnings which are straightforward⁵（简单的） and essentially⁶ uncontroversial, but they can't require a cigarette pack to serve as a mini-billboard for the government's anti-smoking campaign," Floyd Abrams, a lawyer representing the cigarette makers⁸, said in a statement.

He added that the new labels would violate the companies' free-speech rights under the first amendment⁹ to the constitution.

The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act requires such labels to cover the top half of the front and back sides of cigarette packages and 20% of the printed advertising¹⁰.

In June, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the new labels could deter¹¹（制止） young people from starting to smoke and give adult smokers¹² a new incentive¹³ to quit.

Cigarette makers lost a similar suit last year in a US district court in Kentucky when a judge said the FDA could move ahead with forcing the companies to use the new labels, which include images of dead bodies, diseased lungs and rotten teeth.

That ruling is currently pending¹⁴ before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

One of the biggest US tobacco firms, Altria - parent company of Philip Morris and maker⁷ of Marlboro cigarettes - has not joined in any of the legal action against the FDA.

More than 220,000 people in the US are expected to be diagnosed with lung cancer in 2011, according to the American Cancer Society.

Tobacco use is estimated to be responsible for 443,000 deaths in the US each year.