(Image Source: Food and Drug Administration)

BY STEVEN HSIEH

You're watching multisource business news analysis from Newsy.

Five tobacco companies have filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration over a law that forces them to slap graphic warning labels on packs of cigarettes.

Big tobacco lawyers say the law violates the firms’ First Amendment rights.  Fox Business’ Andrew Napolitano explains.

Napolitano: “The tobacco companies are saying, ‘you know what?  If the government wants to exercise its own free speech – if the government wants to say this product, which the government earns 50 billion a year in taxes, is a bad product, let the government say it.  They can’t make us say it about our own product.’  This is called forced speech.  And the First Amendment, which protects your free speech – your right to say what you want – also protects you from saying things you don’t want to say.”

Tobacco executives say the law will cost their companies millions – and the ads themselves are too 'emotionally charged.’

In this ad, for example, the man in the photograph isn’t dead.  He’s a paid actor.  Also, that scar?  Fake. But a writer for Gawker says – the litigants, in this case, don’t have much room to talk.

“Do you hear that, FDA? If there is one thing the tobacco industry will not stand for, it's having their product aligned with emotionally charged images. (Unless it's an emotion related to sex, masculinity, friendship, strength of character, etc.)”

And a writer for Medical News Today says -- even though the labels themselves are about health, that’s not what the lawsuit is concerned about.

“The introduction of these warnings is expected to have a significant public health impact… Of course the bottom line never seems to be health, but money rather.”

CNBC’s Joe Kernan makes his opinion clear – using a – perhaps – hyperbolic example. (Anchor should appear humored)

“Progressives decided that when they put things on cigarette packages and it gets more and more – and people still smoke – they don’t think, ‘wow, people are going to smoke regardless of the nanny state and what we say.’  They think the message still isn’t clear enough.  So they may actually, eventually – with the carton, you may get a piece of a cancerous lung.”

The AFP reports smoking causes 1,200 deaths in the U.S. a day.

'Like' Newsy on Facebook for updates in your news feed.

Get more multisource video news analysis from Newsy

Transcript by Newsy