The FDA the New Regulatory Powers over Tobacco Products

The anti-smoking forces would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) key controls over the tobacco industry, but not the power to ban cigarettes and other tobacco products. Because they think that the new power over cigarettes would save the federal government some money. The bill, which passed earlier this month, would also cost the multibillion-dollar tobacco industry $235 million in 2010 and more than $500 million a year by 2013, the Congressional Budget Office said. It would save the federal government $5 million over five years and $2 million over 10 years, in part by reducing healthcare costs, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) explained. But state and local governments, which collected about $19 billion in 2008 from taxes on tobacco products, would lose more than $1 billion from 2010 to 2014. The researchers said that the amount of tax revenues and settlement funds collected by state and local governments would decline as a result of the federal regulations authorized by this legislation because of lower consumption of tobacco products. Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, calls for the FDA to set up a new center to regulate the marketing of cigarettes and other tobacco products as well as control nicotine content and package labels. It would charge Tobacco Company user fees to pay for the agency’s new workload. But not all tobacco companies support the new bill. Only Altria Group Inc’s Philip Morris unit, the nation’s largest cigarette maker, supports it, as do some smaller companies. Because they consider that the new bill would reduce the number of children and teenagers who smoke 11 percent by 2019 and further curb the number of adult smokers by about 2 percent after 10 years.

But others, such as Reynolds American Inc’s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco unit and Lorillard Inc’s Lorillard Tobacco Co, oppose it.