Probably more than any other individual, Michael Pertschuk was responsible for the government’s placing warning labels on cigarettes, banning tobacco advertising from television and radio, requiring seatbelts in cars, and putting in place other consumer protections — all by helping to draft those measures into law as the chief counsel and staff director of the Senate Commerce Committee and later as the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Jimmy Carter.

Michael Pertschuk died on Nov. 16 at his home in Santa Fe, NM. He was 89.

“I spent a good part of my life making life miserable for the tobacco companies,” Mr. Pertschuk once said, “and I’m not sorry about that.”