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Senate Passes Tobacco Regulation Bill  

The Senate overwhelmingly passed historic legislation Thursday that puts the tobacco industry under the regulation of the Food and Drug Administration.

Companies are weighing the impact of the bill, which they say also puts severe, perhaps unconstitutional, restrictions on advertising and packaging. Those limits, they worry, could undo business plans based on smokeless tobacco products, which they have been developing in anticipation of this day.

Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, who spearheaded the original effort to treat the nicotine in tobacco as a drug, hailed the Senate vote of 79-17. "It's as strong a bill as we could have ever imagined," he said.

He said the industry fees mandated by the bill to pay for FDA regulation will enable the regulator to strictly enforce new rules, such as a ban on candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes. "With $600 [million] to $700 million from industry to support it, I think the administration can set it up."

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