US cigarette manufacturers firms have filed a suit on striking warning tags

Five tobacco firms have filed a suit the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over a new act that would force them to place graphic health cautions on their cigarette packets.

The companies disagree with the plan defies their legal right to free speech, as it needs companies to advertise the government's anti-smoking memo.

The FDA has not remarked on the prosecution.

The new warnings will be needed on cigarette packs from September 2012.

RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard Tobacco, Commonwealth Brands, Liggett Group and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco said they prosecuted against the FDA late on Tuesday in an attempt to delay enforcement of the new constitution.

RJ Reynolds brands include Camel and Winston, while Lorillard brands contain Newport and True.

In their 41-page objections, the five firms say the new stickers would unlawfully force them to make customers "unhappy, depressed and afraid" to purchase their products.

"The authority can necessitate cautions which are clear-cut and essentially undisputed, but they can't need a cigarette box to serve as a mini-billboard for the government's anti-smoking drive," Floyd Abrams, a lawyer on behalf of the cigarette manufacturers, said in a statement.

He further said that the new tags would harm the companies' free-speech rights under the first alteration to the law.

The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act needs such tags to cover the top half of the front and back sides of cigarette packets and 20% of the printed promotional.

In June, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the new tags could discourage young people from initiating to smoke and give adult smokers a new benefit to quit.

Cigarette manufacturers lost a similar case previous year in a US district court in Kentucky when a judge said the FDA could move forward with enforcing the firms to use the new tags, which include images of dead bodies, diseased lungs and rotten teeth.

That verdict is presently pending before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

One of the largest US tobacco companies, Altria - parent firm of Philip Morris and manufacturers of Marlboro cigarettes - has not connected in any of the lawful action against the FDA.

In excess of 220,000 people in the US are estimated to be diagnosed with lung cancer in 2011, according to the American Cancer Society.

Tobacco utilization is anticipated to be responsible for 443,000 deaths in the US each year.