Jump to full article: New York Times, 2009-06-11
Author: DUFF WILSON
Intro: The Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to impose federal regulation on cigarettes and other forms of tobacco, passing a landmark bill to empower the Food and Drug Administration to control products that eventually kill half their regular users.
The legislation, with only minor differences from a version the House passed in April by a nearly 3-to-1 ratio. A White House spokesman, Reid H. Cherlin, said on Thursday that President Obama, who was a co-sponsor of the bill when he was in the Senate, would sign the legislation when it reached his desk. . . .
But while the F.D.A. could mandate a reduced level of nicotine, an addictive chemical, the law expressly says the agency cannot ban it. Public health advocates say outlawing nicotine would force addicts would turn to a black market or other sources.
Still, health advocates predict that F.D.A. product standards could eventually reduce some of the 60 carcinogens and 4,000 toxins in cigarette smoke, or make them taste so bad they deter users.
"This is a bill not for a one-year or two-year splash, but for a long-term impact," said Matthew L. Myers . . .
But Brendan McCormick, a spokesman for Philip Morris's parent, Altria, argued that previous marketing restrictions, like the television advertising ban imposed in 1971, had not frozen companies' market shares. He said his company supported "federal regulation and the benefits it will bring to tobacco consumers and the greater predictability and stability we think it will bring to the tobacco industry."
There are only minor differences between the Senate bill and the one the House passed in April -- the main one involving the size of the graphic warnings on cigarette packs, which would be bigger under the Senate version. . . .
A Goldman Sachs analyst, Judy Hong, wrote in a report to investors last week, "Some of the new remedies may be unpleasant but not financially disabling to the tobacco companies." . . .
The Association of National Advertisers, a trade organization, says the legislation's "massive crushing and unprecedently broad advertising restrictions" violate First Amendment protections for commercial speech. A court challenge is probable.
While cigarette consumption has declined in most Western countries, it is growing in Asia and Eastern Europe.
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