WASHINGTON – The federal agency charged with keeping food and drugs from harming people may soon be asked to take a consumer product that kills more than 400,000 people a year and make it safer.
Cigarettes’ toll can be reduced, tobacco foes say; smoking accounts for nearly one in five deaths in the United States. They point to a bill that is expected to pass a Senate committee Wednesday as the tool to make it happen.
The legislation would give the Food and Drug Administration the same authority over cigarettes and other tobacco products that the regulatory agency already has over countless other consumer products.
The bill would let the FDA regulate the levels of tar, nicotine and other harmful components of tobacco products. Cigarette smoke alone contains some 4,000 chemicals, more than 40 of which are known to cause cancer.
New products would need FDA approval before they could be sold, according to the legislation. The bill also would authorize the FDA to set national standards for tobacco products to control how they are made, as well as force the disclosure of their ingredients, including compounds and additives, and in what quantities.
That, supporters claim, should help expose and ultimately limit the ways cigarettes are tinkered with in ways that would make them any more dangerous, supporters add.
No one among those for or against the Senate bill, mirrored by matching legislation in the House, believes it could result in a safe cigarette. There is consensus that there is no such thing. But some opponents of the bill maintain it could create that impression.
“It would still be a deadly product. They are not going to make it a safe product by taking out particular smoke constituents. The problem is the public is going to perceive the product is safe because the FDA has assumed jurisdiction,” said Dr. Michael Siegel, a Boston University School of Public Health professor.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
