Cite as: 505 U. S. 504 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
II
Although physicians had suspected a link between smoking and illness for centuries, the first medical studies of that connection did not appear until the 1920's. See U. S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Report of the Surgeon General, Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking: 25 Years of Progress 5 (1989). The ensuing decades saw a wide range of epidemiologic and laboratory studies on the health hazards of smoking. Thus, by the time the Surgeon General convened an advisory committee to examine the issue in 1962, there were more than 7,000 publications examining the relationship between smoking and health. Id., at 5-7.
In 1964, the advisory committee issued its report, which stated as its central conclusion: "Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action." U. S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, U. S. Surgeon General's Advisory Committee, Smoking and Health 33 (1964). Relying in part on that report, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which had long regulated unfair and deceptive advertising practices in the cigarette industry,7 promulgated a new trade regulation rule. That rule, which was to take effect January 1, 1965, established that it would be a violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act "to fail to disclose, clearly and prominently, in all advertising and on every pack, box, carton, or container [of cigarettes] that cigarette smoking is dangerous to health and may cause death from cancer and other diseases." 29 Fed. Reg. 8325 (1964). Several States also moved to regulate the advertising and labeling of cigarettes. See, e. g., 1965 N. Y. Laws, ch. 470; see also 111 Cong. Rec. 13900-13902 (1965) (statement of Sen. Moss). Upon a congressional request, the FTC postponed enforcement of its
7 See, e. g., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 56 F. T. C. 956 (1960); Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co., 55 F. T. C. 354 (1958); Philip Morris & Co., Ltd., 51 F. T. C. 857 (1955); R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 48 F. T. C. 682 (1952); London Tobacco Co., 36 F. T. C. 282 (1943).
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