FDA oversight is key missing piece in efforts to protect public health.
Jump to full article: USA Today blogs, 2009-06-01
Intro: North Carolina, the nation's largest tobacco producer, just did what was once thought impossible. The state enacted one of the nation's strictest bans on smoking in public places, proving the battle against smoking has come a long way since a handful of California cities and counties passed the nation's first smoke-free laws in 1990.
Today, 27 states heavily restrict smoking in public places. A dozen have tax rates of $2 or more a pack in an effort to price this lethal habit beyond the budgets of many teenagers . . .
Yet for all that has changed, there's still one gaping hole in the nation's efforts to fight an addiction that kills 400,000 Americans a year: The federal government, which regulates everything from breakfast cereal to pet food, doesn't regulate tobacco.
For more than two decades, the tobacco companies and their political allies have beaten back efforts by public health advocates to fill that gap. Now, at last, that appears likely to change. The Senate is poised, as early as this week, to debate a measure that would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate tobacco products. . . .
Despite all the progress against smoking, the public remains vulnerable to an industry that turned deception into a fine art. New research suggests that the risk of getting lung cancer from smoking today in the USA is far higher than the risk to smokers 40 years ago. One possible reason, according to David Burns of the University of California-San Diego, is the design of cigarettes sold in the U.S. Regulation might enable the government to change that design.
Congress has an opportunity to add an important new weapon to attack the nation's No. 1 killer. More than 1,000 children get hooked on cigarettes each day. That's 1,000 new reasons to regulate this deadly product.
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Despite all the progress against smoking, the public remains vulnerable to an industry that turned deception into a fine art.
USA Today editorial.
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