A Public Participation Forum for the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and its Federal Advisory Committee (TPSAC)

Jacob Sullum | Reason Magazine

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that if the FDA chooses to regulate cigars it could decide to follow New York City’s asinine example by banning flavored varieties because they supposedly encourage kids to smoke. Last week five senators—Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)—urged the FDA to do just that:

As teenagers turn to cigars instead of cigarettes, these products pose a serious threat to public health and threaten to undermine the important public health protections of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. 

e-cigarette-forum

A note of clarification here: While the FDA has announced their intent to regulate not only e-cigarettes but all tobacco products under the Tobacco Act, this has not yet occurred. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (which became Chapter IX of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act) named specific products. NOT named were such products as cigars, hookahs, e-cigarettes. In order to bring these additional products in, the FDA will need to propose the regulations (which they have already announced that they plan to do, but have not done so yet). Then, there will be a period of public comment (Regulations.gov). Finally, the FDA will announce that it has published (or decided to drop) the proposed regulation.

If you have a risk factor for lung cancer, smoking is going to make it worse.  Sure, if you have a rick factor you may get lung cancer whether you smoke or not and 90% of smokers will never get lung cancer, but the multi-billion dollar marketing campaign against smoking doesn’t like to engage in science or fact – yet an “e-cigarette” would seem to be a happy medium for everyone, right? They mimic mimic the look, feel and taste of traditional cigarettes, and deliver the dose of nicotine a smoker craves without most of the 10,000 chemicals in cigarettes. That has to be better, for people who just will not quit. 

Fox  News

Swisher Sweets could be the next target of federal tobacco regulation. 

A group of U.S. senators is urging the Food and Drug Administration to ban flavored cigars, claiming the “candy-like flavorings” increasingly are luring teens into the smoking habit — even as they turn away from cigarettes. 

“Cigars contain the same toxic and cancer-causing chemicals contained in cigarettes, and public health experts have warned that cigars are not safe alternatives to cigarettes,” the senators wrote in a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. 

townhall.com

Dan Holler  

It is easy to see why one-in-five small businesses list regulations as their biggest obstacle; just look at Tampa-based J.C. Newman Cigar Company.

At 116 years old, it is America’s oldest family-owned premium cigar maker. In 1895, J.C. Newman borrowed $50 and started a cigar company. At the time, he was an unemployed cigar maker eager to achieve the American Dream. He did just that, building a small business that withstood 19 recessions, three panics, two depressions, two world wars and the Cuban embargo. Newman Cigar Co. innovated and adapted to a changing world, and today employs 125 people.