FDA’S slow path on tobacco angers health advocates
Anti-smoking groups suing a decade after changes proposed
It seemed like a new era in the half-century battle against the deadly toll of tobacco: U.S. health officials for the first time would begin regulating cigarettes, chew and other products responsible for a half-million American deaths annually.
“The decades-long effort to protect our children from the harmful effects of smoking has finally emerged victorious,” then President Barack Obama said in a speech before signing the 2009 measure into law.
But a decade later, health advocates say the Food and Drug Administration has yet to put in place the most sweeping changes envisioned by Congress. Efforts to bolster cigarette warnings and ban harmful ingredients have been stymied by tobacco companies. And the pace of progress is so slow that the FDA now faces lawsuits from its traditional allies: anti-smoking groups who are suing the agency to take action.
“If you’re not moving forward on your own with a clear goal in mind then, at some point, this is what happens,” said Eric Lindblom, a lawyer at Georgetown University’s O’neill Institute who previously worked at the FDA’S Center for Tobacco Products.
Ten years after the center’s launch, Lindblom and others say they underestimated the obstacles that would crowd FDA’S path, including industry lawsuits, lobbying and the grinding pace of government bureaucracy.
Earlier this month the agency proposed new graphic warning labels for cigarette packets, a court-ordered move triggered by a lawsuit from the American Lung Association and other health groups who alleged the agency was dragging its feet on the effort. A 2011 attempt at requiring the labels was defeated in court by tobacco companies.
FDA tobacco director Mitch Zeller said the agency’s critics have overlooked the enormous accomplishment of setting up the new center in the first place.
“There was and there still is no other regulatory agency in the world with these authorities and responsibilities,” Zeller said in an interview.
He noted that the FDA has invested more than $1.6 billion in tobacco research to guide its future decisions, such as how to regulate electronic cigarettes. He also pointed to the agency’s $870 million in spending on anti-smoking advertising campaigns. Last week, researchers estimated that one of those campaigns, dubbed “the real cost,” prevented between 380,000 and 587,000 young people from starting on cigarettes.
In a statement, agency acting Commissioner Ned Sharpless also highlighted the “extraordinary investments the FDA has made in science, education and enforcement,” asserting that they “are already paying public health dividends and are sure to yield even more in the years to come.”
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act did immediately ban misleading terms like “light” and “mild” from cigarettes and prohibited all f lavors, except for menthol. But the more transformative powers to remake the tobacco industry were to be written by the agency itself as federal regulations. They include the ability to:
■ reduce nicotine to make cigarettes less addictive
■ remove cancer-causing ingredients to make tobacco products less harmful
■ restrict packaging and advertising to make products less appealing.