Jason

Cigarettes marketed as "light," "low" tar or "mild" will be banned within a year as part of a historic bill the Senate passed 79-17 on Thursday.

The legislation, approved by the House in April, is the most sweeping tobacco-control measure ever passed by Congress. It goes now to President Obama, who has said he will sign it.

The bill, which gives the Food and Drug Adminstration the authority to regulate tobacco products, comes after more than a decade of congressional debate and a half-century since the U.S. Surgeon General's 1964 landmark report linking smoking to lung cancer.

"It's long overdue," said Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

The bill will dramatically affect how tobacco is marketed as the bill's provisions are phased in:

• Immediately, tobacco makers can no longer make claims that their products pose fewer health risks.

• Within three months, candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes are banned, and the FDA can extend that ban to cigars and moist snuff, where such flavorings are more common. Menthol is exempt.

• Within nine months, the FDA must publish marketing restrictions that will take effect six months later.

• Within 12 months, new warning labels will be placed on smokeless tobacco products.

• Within 15 months, tobacco companies must disclose the ingredients in their products.

• Within two years, the FDA must issue rules on graphic warrnings for cigarettes that will cover half the pack. The labels will take effect 15 months later.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...rol-bill_N.htm





I wonder if that means I need to stock up on some of my flavored Cigars. Although not candy based they are flavored.

40sondacurb

Whatever will Snoop Dog do?

Drew1369

So now I will really really know that smoking is bad for me... whatever will I do without the government helping...

bry623

My biggest question is :What does the government hope to accomplish?

dai

most of those already implemented here

have not noticed much difference

djaburg

Perhaps he's setting up a situation where people on government assistance can't claim they didn't know that spending their handouts on tobacco and booze was bad for them?

Chode

I can't imagine why the Government would try to regulate the marketing of an addictive drug with serious health risks.

Jason

President Barack Obama signed a bill Monday that the largest tobacco company in America had championed for years. Obama nevertheless claimed he had taken on Big Tobacco and won.

As Obama signed the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act,” giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco, he proclaimed in the Rose Garden: “Today, despite decades of lobbying and advertising by the tobacco industry, we’ve passed a law to help protect the next generation of Americans from growing up with a deadly habit. …”

But on Tuesday morning, the home page of Philip Morris, which controls a majority of the U.S. cigarette market, blared “Philip Morris Supports Federal Regulation of Tobacco.”

Was Obama ignorant of the $40,000-a-day pro-regulation lobbying effort by the country’s biggest cigarette maker?

Was Obama surprised by the applause Monday from Philip Morris’ parent company Altria, calling the bill “an important and historic achievement”?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/po.../48935107.html