A Landmark Legislative Victory: Congress authorizes FDA to regulate tobacco

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Some 50 years after the U.S. Surgeon General first warned of the dangers of smoking and 45 years after the seminal Surgeon General's 1964 Report on Smoking and Health, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally will be authorized to regulate tobacco products. It has been a long time in coming.

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate voted 79-17 to give the FDA new powers to limit nicotine in the cigarettes that kill nearly a half-million people a year, to drastically curtail ads that glorify tobacco and to ban flavored products aimed at spreading the habit to young people. Senate votes to impose strict tobacco regulation

The legislation, one of the most dramatic anti-smoking initiatives since the surgeon general's report, would give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate the content, marketing and advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products.

"This legislation represents the strongest action Congress has ever taken to reduce tobacco use, the leading preventable cause of death in the United States," declared Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids.

Supporters of FDA regulation of tobacco have struggled for more than a decade to overcome powerful resistance — from the industry and elsewhere. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the agency did not have the authority under current law to regulate tobacco products, and the Bush administration opposed several previous efforts by Congress to write a new law.

On Friday, the U.S. House voted 307-97 to pass the measure and send it on to the White House for President Obama's signature. Congress Sends Obama Bill to Regulate Tobacco

President Obama hailed the bipartisan votes in Congress on the bill, which he said "truly defines change in Washington." He said he looks forward to signing it into law.

Obama, himself a smoker who has struggled to quit, then congratulated lawmakers in brief remarks in the White House Rose Garden.

"We've known for years, even decades, about the harmful, addictive and often deadly effects of tobacco products," he said. "Each year, Americans pay nearly $100 billion in added health care costs due to smoking. Each day, about 1,000 young people under the age of 18 become regular smokers."

He said leaders of both parties have fought for the bill's provisions for more than a decade, battling stiff opposition from the tobacco companies.

"Along with legislation to protect credit-card owners from unfair rate hikes, homeowners from mortgage fraud and abuse and taxpayers from wasteful defense spending, this kids' tobacco bill would be the fourth piece of bipartisan legislation that I've signed into law, over the last month, that protects the American consumer and changes the way Washington works and who Washington works for," Obama said. "So I look forward to signing it."

Health advocates argued that FDA oversight is the best hope for reducing the 400,000 deaths in the United States each year from tobacco use. More than 1,000 public health groups and faith organizations supported the legislation.

It creates a new tobacco center within the FDA that will be funded by fees from the industry. Those fees are estimated to total more than $500 million annually by 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The legislation stops short of allowing the FDA to prohibit tobacco or to eliminate nicotine, the addictive drug in tobacco, entirely.