The FDA now has the power to regulate what cigarettes taste like. For the children.
President Barack Obama cited his own long struggle to quit the cigarettes he got hooked on as a teenager as he signed the nation’s strongest-ever anti-smoking bill Monday and praised it for providing critically needed protections for kids. “The decades-long effort to protect our children from the harmful effects of tobacco has emerged victorious,” Obama said at a signing ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.
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Before dozens of invited guests, including children from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the president signed legislation giving the Food and Drug Administration unprecedented authority to regulate tobacco. Obama accused the tobacco industry of targeting young people, exposing them to a “constant and insidious barrage of advertising where they live, where they learn and where they play. Most insidiously, they are offered products with flavorings that mask the taste of tobacco and make it even more tempting.” The new law bans candy and fruit flavors in tobacco products, and it limits advertising that could attract young people.
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act also allows the FDA to lower the amount of addiction-causing nicotine in tobacco products and block misleading labels such “low tar” and “light.” Tobacco companies also will be required to cover their cartons with large graphic warnings. The law won’t let the FDA ban nicotine or tobacco outright.
Just think how far Obama might have gone had it not been for Joe Camel.
Do they still make those bubble gum cigarettes they had when I was a kid? Presumably, they’re not banned by this action, since they’re not made of tobacco. But they could theoretically encourage kids to smoke.
And couldn’t any advertising attract young people?
Photo by Flickr user Joan Thewlis under Creative Commons license.
