Graphic warning labels, designed to cover the top half of the fronts and backs of cigarette packages, have been threatened about since at least 2009.

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The government fired the first shot way back in 1964 with the landmark surgeon general’s report that broke the news that cigarettes were bad, very bad in fact for those who’d care to breathe unaided or avoid gruesome, premature deaths. [...] Now, though, news about warning labels barely rates a raised eyebrow.

The government, through an act of Congress called the Tobacco Control Act of 2009, began requiring full color, graphic labels showing such things as smoke billowing through a tracheal hole or a cadaver on packaging.