Industries equate product use with free speech to shift regulatory debate

Evidence

The tobacco industry has pursued a multipronged justification of the value of tobacco products for personal well-being and for society at large. One form of justification is cast in terms of constitutional protection and individual rights. In an article in the Legal Backgrounder, Jonathan W. Emord (1992), an ally of the tobacco industry, affirmed the constitutional protection of tobacco products by equating them with free speech. Recall that the gun industry used the same linguistic sleight of hand, equating use of a product with free speech. This argument shifts the debate to whether one is for or against free speech. No one is prohibited, either socially or legally, from talking about smoking. This is how Emord frames the displaced justification: “Muzzling the speech rights of the tobacco companies and establishing a speech orthodoxy on the issue of tobacco consumption violates the basic tenets of the First Amendment. Singling out one industry for discriminatory treatment violates the basic tenants of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments” (Emord, 1992). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1631 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Free speech claims now undermine most democratically enacted regulation. — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 211; Lawyer advertising bans fell as protected commercial speech under the First Amendment — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1284; Pro-corporate IP advocacy replaced competition discourse with protection and exclusion language — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 198 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Industries justify harmful products by recasting product regulation as an attack on constitutional rights #expands (0.92) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1631