A way to prevent tobacco-related deaths
Published 2:57 am Wednesday, June 17, 2009
By Staff
Tobacco is responsible for 440,000 deaths each year, making it the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States. Yet, despite these deaths, additional devastating but nonfatal impacts on health, and its addictive nature, tobacco is not a regulated product.
Congress has just passed a law to allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tobacco and protect consumers for the first time since a 1998 court case found that the FDA had no such authority. The law, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, will go a long way toward regulating tobacco products.
Currently, there are more than 44 million smokers. Of these, some 90 percent began smoking before the age of 18. Each day in our country, approximately 3,000 minors take up smoking. Reducing the use of tobacco by even 50 percent among minors would prevent more than 10 million children from becoming habitual smokers and save over three million of them from premature death due to tobacco-related disease.
In 2005, cigarette manufacturers spent more than $13 billion to attract new users, retain current users, and increase consumption of tobacco. Children are especially vulnerable to tobacco promotions, and tobacco companies have taken advantage of this by promoting tobacco use in movies and buying advertisements and sponsorships of sporting events.
Advertising campaigns have succeeded in misleading Americans young and old into discounting the risks of tobacco use, and into believing that certain tobacco products are healthier. For example, "Light" or "Low-Tar" designations are widely believed to be a health-conscious alternative to regular cigarettes, but the reality is that they are barely better – and in some cases may be worse.
It is critical that the FDA gain regulatory authority over tobacco-related products in order to ensure that consumers are better informed of the possible risks, the addictive qualities, and the health outcomes associated with using tobacco products.
The new regulatory authority in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act will create more transparency and will prevent underage smoking. As is the case for many other consumable goods, tobacco manufacturers will be required to list all ingredients included in their products so that consumers will know exactly what they are purchasing. The law will require FDA approval for all labels before the products are put on the market. The act also gives the FDA the ability to set quality criteria for tobacco products and to prohibit cigarettes containing any flavoring other than tobacco or menthol.
The act will also allow the FDA to analyze tobacco products that claim to be "reduced risk" to make sure that health claims are verifiable. And it will forbid tobacco manufacturers from targeting advertising at children and from undertaking advertising campaigns that mislead the public about the risks of tobacco use.
It is estimated that these measures will save hundreds of thousands of lives and save more than $150 billion in health care costs a year, impacting the lives of smokers and non-smokers alike who suffer adverse health effects from tobacco. And the law will help protect children from establishing a dependence on tobacco products.
For too long, tobacco manufacturers have taken advantage of loopholes in our legal and regulatory framework that allowed them to avoid commonsense regulations. By putting an end to their free run without regulation, this law will protect consumers and help improve the health of smokers and non-smokers across the country.