The NYT reports that the ACLU, among other groups, plans to challenge the recently passed restrictions on tobacco advertisement on First Amendment grounds (as Ron Paul suggested below):
The law’s ban on outdoor advertising within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds would effectively outlaw legal advertising in many cities, critics of the prohibition said. And restricting stores and many forms of print advertising to black-and-white text, as the law specifies, would interfere with legitimate communication to adults, tobacco companies and advertising groups said in letters to Congress and interviews over the last week.
The controversy, legal experts say, involves tension between the right of tobacco companies to communicate with adult smokers and the public interest in preventing young people from smoking.
Opponents of the new strictures, including the Association of National Advertisers and the American Civil Liberties Union, predict that federal courts will throw out the new marketing restrictions. They say, for example, a 2001 Supreme Court decision struck down a
Massachusetts rule that had imposed a similar ban on advertising within 1,000 feet of schools.
“Anybody looking at this in a fair way would say the effort here is not just to protect kids, which is a substantial interest of the country, but to make it virtually impossible to communicate with anybody,” Daniel L. Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, said in an interview Monday. “We think this creates very serious problems for the First Amendment.”
His group represents 340 companies spending more than $100 billion a year on marketing and ads.
Some take issue with the ACLU's taking part in this effort and have evidence that tobacco companies have become a leading contributor of the organization.
- Secret Documents Reveal A.C.L.U. Tobacco Industry Ties
- The ACLU's Tobacco Addiction - American Civil Liberties Union ...
- American Civil Liberties Union - SourceWatch
