FDA turning packs into "government billboards"

More extensive, graphic warning labels are going to be required for cigarette packs under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, and tobacco companies are fighting the issue in court.
On Wednesday, lawyers for the companies, which include Winston-Salem's R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. , offered arguments to a three-judge panel of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals contesting the new requirement. RJR is a subsidiary of Winston-Salem-based Reynolds American Inc. (NYSE: RAI).
WFDD News talked with RJR spokesman David Howard on Wednesday, who said that the government has gone too far by expanding warning label requirements that have been in place for four decades.
"Essentially it's the government coming in, seizing our package, basically turning our package into government billboards to deliver their defined messages," Howard told the radio station. "It's taking away one of the few remaining avenues we have with which to responsibly communicate with adult tobacco consumers and doing that without any say from us."
The new warning labels would take up at least half of the package and feature graphic pictures to serve as warnings about tobacco use. Tobacco companies are also limited in where the brand logo can appear on the package.