Warning Labels

Millions have worn the nicotine patch, chewed the gum or sucked on the lozenge as a way to wean themselves off cigarettes. But millions more have ripped off the patch or spit out the gum or lozenges because they slipped and smoked a cigarette, and believed the warning labels that suggested the combination was dangerous. Don't worry, the Food & Drug Administration said Monday. Keep using the patch, gum or lozenges and keep trying to quit, even if you're still smoking: there's no danger to using both, at least for a short period.

Millions have worn the nicotine patch, chewed the gum or sucked on the lozenge as a way to wean themselves off cigarettes. But millions more have ripped off the patch or spit out the gum or lozenges because they slipped and smoked a cigarette, and believed the warning labels that suggested the combination was dangerous. Don't worry, the Food & Drug Administration said Monday. Keep using the patch, gum or lozenges and keep trying to quit, even if you're still smoking: there's no danger to using both, at least for a short period.

Reading the fine print on prescription drug warning labels can be hard enough. But a new study  suggests that many people, especially older ones, don't notice these advisories at all. Colored warning stickers, which pharmacists often slap on pill vials in addition to the standard white pharmacy labels, highlight key safety instructions, such as “Avoid smoking while taking this drug” or “Do not drive while taking this medication.” The...

Reading the fine print on prescription drug warning labels can be hard enough. But a new study  suggests that many people, especially older ones, don't notice these advisories at all. Colored warning stickers, which pharmacists often slap on pill vials in addition to the standard white pharmacy labels, highlight key safety instructions, such as “Avoid smoking while taking this drug” or “Do not drive while taking this medication.” The...

On March 18, six of nine California legislators voted to condemn 4,000 children a year to a lifetime of suffering. They did so by abstaining on a bill, SB 96, that would inform women of the dangers of consuming alcohol while pregnant by requiring warning labels on alcoholic beverages. The abstentions came in the face of extensive lobbying and $700,000 in campaign contributions by the state's alcohol industry. Because the bill would do no more than inform people of a proven risk to the health of their children, the outcome of the vote can only be interpreted as a conscious decision on the part of our elected officials to sacrifice the well-being of our children for the health of their campaign finances.

Warning labels on cigarette packs have not significantly dented the French passion for smoking. But now, new regulations requiring much larger labels are confronting smokers with a simple message: "Smoking Kills."

As part of an agreement with dozens of attorneys general across the country, paint companies will soon be putting warning labels on their products, alerting consumers to the danger of lead exposure during home renovations. The agreement between the National Paint & Coating Assn. and 45 states, including California, was announced last week and includes the District of Columbia, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

After watching an alarming slide presentation on alcohol-related birth defects, the Santa Ana City Council on Tuesday adopted a resolution supporting warning labels and signs advising pregnant women of the dangers of drinking. The resolution was intended as a message for Gov. George Deukmejian and the State Health and Welfare Agency, who, in accordance with the 1986 anti-toxics initiative, must decide what type of warning should be required.

The aspirin industry, bowing to intense pressure to alert the public about the association between aspirin use in children and the often-fatal Reye's Syndrome, agreed in a closed meeting Friday to voluntarily put warning labels on aspirin products. Representatives from major aspirin manufacturers met late Friday with Dr.

Consumer warning labels will start appearing this fall on nearly all the treated lumber in the United States, warning about an arsenic-laced preservative being used to protect the wood from decay and insect damage, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday. The labels are designed to let people know about the presence of chromated copper arsenate, a powerful pesticide. In addition, there will be stickers and signs for all in-store displays and a new toll-free hotline and Web site.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon has blocked the federal government's plan to require cigarette manufacturers to cover half of each package sold with a graphic health warning. In his ruling, issued late Wednesday, Leon said the government mandate amounted to an "impermissible expropriation of a company's advertising space for government advocacy. " That decision confirms a temporary stay issued by Leon in November - a move that signaled his view that a suit brought last August by several tobacco manufacturers against the Department of Health and Human Services would likely prevail.

A federal judge has put a temporary block on new graphic warning labels for cigarette packages as a case concerning the constitutionality of requiring the labels proceeds. The new labels, which would cover the top half of a cigarette box and include the number to a smoking-cessation hotline, marked the first dramatic anti-smoking move made since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was given new powers to regulate tobacco products, as health writer Melissa Healy has explained . Among other graphic images, the labels show a man blowing smoke out of a tracheotomy hole in his neck, a pair of diseased lungs and a dead man with autopsy staples in his chest.

Even Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion saying that makers of generic drugs don't have to warn patients about newly discovered dangers, agreed that the idea made little sense. How is it that the maker of a brand-name pharmaceutical has to provide information about potential side effects but the companies that produce identical drugs don't? If this is the price the public is expected to pay for cheaper drugs, it's far too high. In a 5-4 decision issued last week, the court rejected lawsuits by two women who suffered serious side effects from generic versions of a medication used for stomach ailments.

Hats off to N.Y. Re "N.Y. legalizes gay marriage," June 25 It's bittersweet, but mainly sweet, seeing the great state of New York post a milestone in human rights. It's bitter in that my state, California, should have and could have been the first among the big states to do it instead of succumbing to the idiotic bigotry of Propositions 22 and 8. Poor California, which used to be the vanguard in so many ways, has been reduced to the vanguard of budget crises and little else.

You've been warned Re "Tobacco warnings take graphic turn," June 21 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is mandating graphic pictures on each pack of cigarettes showing the realities of smoking. Can we soon expect pictures of obese people placed on the front door of every fast-food restaurant? Or pictures of people dying of skin cancer at the entrance to the beach? We should mandate that the FDA change its name to the FNA (Frivolous Nanny Administration). David Green Long Beach Of course these new images will help smokers stop, even if the predicted expectation is for a paltry 300,000 quitters out of the more than 40 million smokers.

For American smokers, her portrait is a glimpse of a future frightening to ponder and, for U.S. health officials, perhaps too powerful to foist on the public: an unsparing photograph of a person scarcely recognizable as a woman, her body wasted by cancer, her hair gone, her blue eyes fixed in a thousand-mile stare. She was Barb Tarbox, and she died on May 18, 2003, of lung cancer at the age of 42. From October 2002, two months after she was diagnosed, to the moment of her death, the Edmonton, Canada, homemaker set about making her ordeal a lesson to others about the dangers of smoking.

The Food and Drug Administration plans to require stronger warning labels on non-prescription antacids, laxatives, antidiarrheal drugs, sleep aids and anti-nausea products, the agency announced Thursday. Antacids containing calcium or magnesium would have to carry warnings that they could react with other drugs and advising people to get professional advice before mixing the medications, the FDA said in a statement. The new labels would have to appear in a year.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday unveiled a group of graphic images and messages that will cover the top half of every cigarette package in the United States starting in fall 2012. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this post said graphic images meant to warn of tobacco's health hazards would appear on cigarette packs beginning this fall. They will appear on packs beginning in fall 2012. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said her agency estimated that the new campaign could induce as many as 213,000 established smokers in the United States to quit in its first year.

Cigarette labels are going for the throat. If you’ve ever peeked at the gross-out pictures in a medical book, you’re really going to want to check out the new warning labels that will soon appear on all cigarette packages sold in the U.S.  The tobacco labels — unveiled Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration — definitely ratchet up the shock value. Instead of a few stern words from the surgeon general, new packages will feature graphic pictures — a guy blowing smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his neck, a corpse with an evidently unsuccessful surgical scar running down his chest, a cancerous lip, a set of diseased lungs.