A judge on Monday blocked a government order that stipulates that cigarette manufacturers put graphic images of dead and sick smokers in their retail packages.
Federal Judge Richard Leon ruled that it is likely that manufacturers of Cigarette win a lawsuit to block the new measure. The judge suspended the order until the trial is resolved, which will take several years . A case brought by similar tobacco companies to label placement is pending in the Court of Appeals in Cincinnati , Ohio. Judge Joseph McKinley suspended much of the advertising restrictions of the law in January 2010. The appeals court heard the arguments of the case in July, but is expected to delay the decision for several months. The judge said he found that Leon images on the labels approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA, for its acronym in English) overstep the bounds of communicating the facts about the health risks of smoking or bordering on activism , a critical distinction in a case freedom of expression. The wrapping of the package would have included color images with a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole, a pair of healthy lungs next to a smoker or a man dead with a breathing oxygen tank, including explicit images.
