L.A. Times: Tobacco Under Regulatory Control? Hardly.
Numerous anti-smoking and health groups support the legislation giving the USFDA regulatory authority over tobacco products. The bill in question was crafted, in part, by the nation’s leading cigarette company, Philip Morris, as part of a deal worked out between the tobacco giant and an anti-smoking group — the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The legislation would do a few good things, including requiring stronger warning labels on cigarette packages and limiting cigarette advertising directed at youths. But the bill’s fine print contains numerous loopholes inserted to appease Philip Morris. In the end, it ensures that federal regulation of tobacco products will remain more about politics than about science.
Take the bill’s handling of nicotine. The FDA would be allowed to mandate lower nicotine levels in cigarettes but not to mandate that nicotine be eliminated from cigarettes. There is no evidence that reducing or eliminating certain constituents in tobacco smoke will reduce the health risks of smoking. Attempting to regulate the levels of certain constituents of tobacco smoke is an absurd approach to the tobacco problem.
Even worse, by giving a federal agency the appearance of regulatory authority over cigarettes without the real ability to regulate, the legislation would seemingly create an FDA seal of approval for cigarettes, giving the public a false sense of security about the increased safety of the product.
In fact, the bill’s crafters are apparently so worried about the harmful effects of such a public perception that they have written a clause into the bill that prohibits the cigarette companies from even informing the public that cigarettes are regulated by the FDA or that the companies are in compliance with FDA regulations.
Perhaps most absurd is the bill’s treatment of new and potentially safer products, such as electronic cigarettes. The evidence is still out on whether electronic cigarettes, which deliver nicotine with water vapor rather than smoke, would actually help wean people from tobacco cigarettes. But why would Congress want to ban potentially safer products and continue to allow the deadliest nicotine product (conventional cigarettes) to remain on the market? If the Senate passes the FDA tobacco legislation, it will be institutionalizing, rather than ending, the triumph of politics over science in federal policy-making.
