New legislation has given the Food and Drug Administration powers to regulate tobacco. The law extends oversight but bows to economic and administrative realities.
Jump to full article: Los Angeles Times, 2009-06-29
Author: Melissa Healy
Intro: Tobacco is simply not like the drugs, medical devices and foods the FDA regulates: There are no demonstrable health benefits to tobacco against which the FDA can weigh the risks that go along with its use. In fact, some in Congress argued the FDA has no place in trying to merely limit the damage caused by a product that causes only addiction and harm. By giving its blessing to the sale of some tobacco products and denying others, they argue, the FDA may lead consumers (perhaps those who haven't had contact with the outside world for the last 44 years) to think those products are safe.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the author and champion of the FDA-tobacco bill, acknowledges that this is an unusual role for the FDA. But short of tobacco prohibition -- which, he says, "isn't going to work" -- the FDA is the only agency equipped to limit and reduce the damage that tobacco use does to the nation's health, and stem the recruitment of new smokers among the nation's youth.
"The FDA is the exact agency that should have that authority -- it's a scientific organization with regulatory powers," Waxman said in an interview.
Here are some of the bill's principal provisions, and the FDA's plans for carrying out its new mandate. . . .
Another of the FDA's most intriguing new powers is the right to demand of tobacco companies details of research they have conducted on the contents and health effects of existing and future products --and, potentially, to release those findings to the public.
That is likely to bring American consumers further details about the estimated 60 carcinogens and 4,000 toxic substances found in tobacco products or created when they're smoked.
It is also likely to bring to light tobacco-sponsored marketing and scientific research on smokers' motivations and behavior, and their propensity to addiction, and what ingredients or advertising messages can enhance that propensity.
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