If more potent cigarettes would improve health but encourage smoking, FDA will block them

Last week the U.S. Senate sent to the White House and President Barack Obama signed a bill that will allow the federal Food & Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products for the first time.

Those who fight to stop Americans from using tobacco cheered. The change means flavored cigarettes will be banned, they asserted; advertising aimed at children will also be barred; dastardly cigarette manufacturers will no longer be able to claim that some cigarettes are safer because they have “low” levels of tar and nicotine.

In fact, although some pipe and chewing tobacco products and even specialty brands of small cigars are fruit-flavored, heading down to the local convenience store and attempting to buy a pack of chocolate- or strawberry-flavored cigarettes isn’t likely to get you very far. The most common flavoring agent in tobacco is menthol, and — in part to gain tacit approval for this regulatory scheme from tobacco and lobbying giant Philip Morris, which controls most of the major menthol brands — menthol will be exempt from any early ban on flavoring agents.

As for those “ads targeted at children,” you may search America’s magazines and billboards in vain for any advertisement offering “Buy one pack and get one free if you’re under 16.”

There are no such ads. Instead, the anti-tobacco zealots insist that advertisements featuring bright colors or “cartoonish” characters are secretly targeted at children. Their goal is to see so many restrictions placed on the advertising of these legal products that manufacturers will simply no longer bother.

After all, who’s going to spend millions of dollars for black-and white ads that declare “OUR PRODUCT WILL KILL YOU … and we can’t even tell you it tastes good”?

Tobacco use carries health risks. Many smokers would be well advised to quit; young people should be discouraged from starting.

But under this scheme, existing brands will be locked into their market share. New competitors who may want to offer less harmful products will be shut out — unable to make known the relative advantages of their products through free commercial speech.

The move puts the FDA — a protection racket for the big pharmaceutical houses that alone can afford all the tests required for “FDA approval” of a new nostrum, and already running years behind in that process — in a strange position.

Traditionally, the FDA’s role has been to determine that food additives are safe, and that pharmaceuticals, used as directed, do considerably more good than harm.

More than 50 million Americans concur that tobacco does more good than harm, or they wouldn’t keep using the stuff. But while diseases whose onset and development may be accelerated by tobacco use kill nearly half a million Americans per year, the “good” that users find in tobacco occurs in the realm of mood alteration, making it far harder to quantify.

Doctors rarely ask, “If I get you to stop smoking, are you likely to overeat or start using even more harmful drugs, instead?” So the FDA thus faces the weird task of “regulating” a substance that most medical doctors would prefer to see banned outright.

“Under the bill, the nicotine in cigarettes could be cut to almost zero — but not wiped out entirely, which some health advocates warn reduces the bill’s impact,” McClatchy newspapers report.
Why did manufacturers ever start advertising “lower tar and nicotine,” in the first place? The government required them to measure and report tar and nicotine content, clearly implying that higher concentrations were more harmful. Manufacturers advertised “low tar and nicotine” to turn this government-mandated lemon into lemonade.

In fact, since smokers smoke primarily for the effect of the active drug nicotine, and since the tar and other chemicals in cigarettes can lodge in the lungs, contributing to cancers and respiratory ailments, one way to reduce the harm of cigarettes might be to provide ways for tobacco users to get more nicotine into their system while smoking fewer cigarettes. But anyone waiting for the FDA to approve tobacco products that advertise “Much higher nicotine so you need only consume one a day to get your usual dose” may have a very long wait — regardless of the fact that such a product might decrease many current smokers’ health risks.

If the nicotine content of cigarettes is cut “to almost zero,” prohibitionists may indeed get the whopping reduction in the use of licensed and taxed cigarettes that they seek. But Americans’ behavior during alcohol Prohibition indicates many consumers may simply switch to black-market tobacco products, which will add to greater potency the benefit of being less expensive since they’re untaxed.

Meantime, in a masterpiece of understatement by a tobacco giant whose grip on the market will only be solidified by the bill in question, the Altria Group, owner of Philip Morris, issued a statement praising the Senate bill but saying it’s imperfect, especially when it comes to advertising restrictions.

“We have expressed First Amendment reservations about certain provisions, including those that could restrict a manufacturer’s ability to communicate truthful information to adult consumers about tobacco products,” Altria wrote.

Government regulators have become infamous for saying, “Sure, what you want to say may be true, but it also might lead consumers to shift their behaviors in ways we don’t like, so forget it.”
This is the standard that will now apply to tobacco processors trying to get true information out to the public.

It’s an interesting precedent. Do you suppose it could turn out to be a dangerous one?

One Comment to “If more potent cigarettes would improve health but encourage smoking, FDA will block them”

  1. Eric C. Sanders Says:

    I guess I’d better tell my broker to get me into Altria Group. Regulation always benefits those already successful in a market segment, while decreasing entry into that segment.

    Corollary question: how many in Congress are already invested in Altria and its peers? Any bets?