Our attorneys at the Tobacco Control Legal Consortium have recently received a deluge of questions from people throughout the U.S.

Few settings offer greater opportunity for improving our nation’s health than the child care environment. The experiences of early childhood, good and bad, lay the foundation for a lifetime. Non-parental child care settings provide a unique forum for shaping those experiences. A strategic approach, based on a holistic healthy child model, can draw on the power of law and policy to support children’s mental and emotional well-being, promote social development, mitigate Adverse Childhood Experiences, and address fundamental social determinants of health.

In an important ruling protecting the role of state and local governments as America’s public health leaders, an appellate court has upheld New York City’s groundbreaking requirement that chain restaurants warn diners about menu items containing dangerous levels of salt. Under the law, chain restaurant menus must display a salt shaker warning icon alongside any menu offering containing more sodium than is recommended for consumption in an entire day. Amazingly, an estimated twenty percent of chain restaurant menu items contain more than a full day’s worth of salt. 

After years of waiting for the graphic warning labels for cigarettes mandated by the Tobacco Control Act, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Massachusetts Chapter of American Academy of Pediatrics, American Cancer Society, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Truth Initiative and three individual pediatricians filed a lawsuit against the FDA to force the agency to comply with

On August 17, 2006 ‒ ten years ago today ‒ Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued her monumental Final Opinion in U.S. v. Philip Morris, the government’s massive case against racketeer cigarette manufacturers.

On January 5, 2016, The Public Health Law Center filed a friend-of-the court (amicus curiae) brief in support of New York City’s groundbreaking new rule requiring that fast food restaurants place salt shaker warning symbols next to menu items that are high in sodium. The brief, developed in collaboration with the Public Good Law Center and ChangeLab Solutions, was joined by a dozen other leading medical and public health organizations.

When the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act became law in 2009, giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products, it created a group of scientists called the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) to guide agency decision-making. The Act directed TPSAC to take up the issue of menthol tobacco products as its first order of business.