Court Pushes Cigarette Warning Effective Date Again

The final rule now will take effect on November 6, 2023.

November 28, 2022

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has issued another order to further postpone the effective date of required warnings on cigarettes. The new date is November 6, 2023, stated the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Any obligation to comply with a deadline tied to the effective date is similarly postponed, according to the FDA, but the agency encourages entities to submit cigarette plans as soon as possible but no later than January 9, 2023.

In March 2020, the FDA issued a final rule requiring cigarette health warnings on cigarette packaging and advertisements. In October 2019, NACS filed a letter on the proposed rule on graphic warning labels on cigarette packages.

The final rule requires cigarette manufacturers to include graphic health warnings on cigarette packaging and advertisements. The “new cigarette health warnings must appear prominently on packages and in advertisements, occupying the top 50% of the area of the front and rear panels of cigarette packages and at least 20 percent of the area at the top of cigarette advertisements,” the rule states.

In addition, retailers of cigarettes are responsible for ensuring those health warnings are visible to the public and unobscured. In terms of packaging requirements, retailers of cigarettes will not be in violation of the final rule if the cigarette packaging: (1) contains a warning; (2) is supplied to the retailer by a licensed manufacturer or distributor; and (3) is not altered by the retailer. However, retailers are responsible for ensuring that the health warnings are visible on packages and unobscured by stickers, sleeves or other materials.

The FDA says that retailers will not be in violation of the advertisement requirements if they receive the advertisements from a cigarette manufacturer or distributor. However, if retailers are creating the advertisements, then they must ensure the health warnings meet the new requirements. In all cases, however, the retailer is liable if the retailer publicly displays an advertisement that does not contain a warning or if that warning has been altered by the retailer in a material way or is obscured from view, according to the FDA.

In the proposed rule, FDA would have required retailers to submit plans for the random and equal display of the required warnings for cigarette packages and required retailers to rotate the warnings in advertisements quarterly. In its letter to the agency, NACS raised concerns with this proposal given that retailers have no control over how manufacturers display and distribute the health warnings, nor do retailers create the advertisements.

In response, the FDA explains in the final rule that retailers selling cigarettes would not be required to submit a plan for packaging, as long as the cigarette packaging: (1) contains a warning; (2) is supplied to the retailer by a tobacco manufacturer or distributor; and (3) is not altered by the retailer in a way material way.

This is the sixth time the agency has delayed the rule’s effective date. The new requirement for graphic warning labels on cigarette packs was initially slated to take effect June 18, 2021.

More details on the rule, as well as the new effective date and recommended date for submission of cigarette plans, can be found on the FDA website.

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