The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has officially abandoned its effort to require tobacco companies to print graphic Australian-style warnings on cigarette packs.

But that doesn’t mean the federal government has ended its sporadic antismoking effort.

From Friday’s Wall Street Journal:

Graphic New Antismoking Ads Unveiled

The U.S. government unveiled a series of graphic new antismoking advertisements Thursday, showing how despite a recent setback it isn’t giving up on its ambition of using explicit images and messages to persuade Americans to quit.

The new ads, the second wave of a campaign begun last year called “Tips from Former Smokers,” depict people who lost limbs, kidneys and loved ones from smoking—as well as a man who developed lung damage after exposure to secondhand smoke.

The ads come just a few days after the government gave up on a planned series of graphic warning labels for cigarette packs that would also have featured gruesome effects of smoking. Those labels were successfully challenged in court by the tobacco industry, and the Food and Drug Administration said it would go back to the drawing board and develop new labels . . .