A signature element of the law imposes new warnings and labels on tobacco packaging and their advertisements, with the goal of discouraging minors and young adults from smoking.
Notable exceptions were Virginia Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner who supported the measure, despite the state's connection to the tobacco industry.
[12] The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was signed into law on June 22, 2009, by President Barack Obama.
(Division A Title II Section 201) [14] Passing of the law was supported by the American Cancer Society, whose CEO said in a press release that "[t]his bill forces Big Tobacco to disclose the poisons in its products and has the power to finally break the dangerous chain of addiction for generations to come.
The legislation also garnered support from the American Heart Association, whose CEO said that the bill "provides a tremendous opportunity to finally hold tobacco companies accountable and restrict efforts to addict more children and adults.
[17][19] The Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee provisioned under the bill is to submit a recommendation on menthol cigarettes to the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services no later than one year after its establishment.
[23] In June 2011, the FDA released nine new warning signs containing both graphic text and images that should be included on all cigarette packaging and advertisement by September 2012.
[24] The textual warnings state:[25][a] Each warning is to be paired with one of the following colored images:[27] man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat; plume of cigarette smoke enveloping an infant receiving a kiss from his or her mother; pair of diseased lungs next to a pair of healthy lungs; diseased mouth afflicted with what appears to be cancerous lesions; man breathing into an oxygen mask; bare-chested male cadaver lying on a table, and featuring what appears to be post-autopsy chest staples down the middle of his torso; woman weeping uncontrollably; man wearing a T-shirt that features a "no smoking" symbol and the words "I Quit.
"[a] Four tobacco companies responded to the mandate by filing a legal challenge in August: The constitutionality of the provision requiring graphic warnings on cigarette packs has been questioned with tobacco companies and others saying that the new warnings violated the first amendment by going beyond being informational and require manufactures of a legal product to "engage in anti-smoking advocacy" on the government's behalf.
On November 7, 2011, US district judge Richard Leon granted a temporary injunction postponing the implementation of the new warnings, ruling that "It is abundantly clear from viewing these images that the emotional response they were crafted to induce is calculated to provoke the viewer to quit, or never to start smoking - an objective wholly apart from disseminating purely factual and uncontroversial information.
Claims of discrimination are enhanced when noting that 99% of kreteks were imported from countries other than the United States (chiefly Indonesia), while menthol cigarettes are produced almost entirely by American tobacco manufacturers.
[36] The WTO was asked to bring this to the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) for resolution in 2013 after the US failed to adhere to the findings scheduled to be implemented by the end of July 2012.
A Generalized System of Preferendes (GSP) scheme was pledged by the US which granted additional "facilities" that exceeded certain value limitations for the following five years.