Smoking and the First Amendment

Authors

Kevin Outterson, Boston University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2011

ISSN

0028-4793

Publisher

Massachusetts Medical Society

Language

en-US

Abstract

On June 22, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law. For the first time, Congress had given the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to directly regulate tobacco products, with the aim of improving public health. And indeed, effective tobacco control would be a remarkable public health achievement — and might be possible if the law is allowed to stand. But on November 7, 2011, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary injunction blocking some of its key provisions as unconstitutional restrictions on commercial speech, and the battle seems likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

Comments

From The New England Journal of Medicine, Kevin Outterson, Smoking and the First Amendment, Volume 365, Page 2351 Copyright ©(2011) Massachusetts Medical Society. Reprinted with permission.

Recommended Citation

Kevin Outterson, Smoking and the First Amendment , in 365 New England Journal of Medicine 2351 (2011).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1764