Tag: United States

  • End-game within reach

    game photoA new report proposes the immediate and accelerated implementation of three actions aimed at ending cigarette use by US adults.

    * Increase excise taxes at the federal level and in many states with four goals: lowering smoking rates, harmonizing taxes across state borders to reduce the illegal trade, covering the costs of smoking-related disease, and encouraging a shift from cigarettes to reduced-risk products and complete cessation.

    * Encourage health and life insurers, employers, and health professionals actively to promote smoking cessation measures supported by the US Preventive Services Task Force and the 2014 US Surgeon General’s Report.

    * Establish a more rational tobacco, nicotine, and alternative products regulatory framework that is based on their relative risks, and that is adaptable to the increased speed of innovation in new technology development.

    The report, Ending cigarette use by adults in a generation is possible, was the work of a team of  tobacco control and health experts whose goal was  to assess the  views of 120 US tobacco control experts about what they saw as some of the key areas and priorities for significantly reducing or eliminating the use of the cigarette.

    According to the report’s executive summary, each year cigarette smoking directly kills 480,000 Americans. ‘It also harms many millions more through secondary effects,’ it says. ‘The economic toll is enormous and costly, with an annual medical bill of over $170 billion. Yet, the public and media’s focus has largely shifted to other health issues. Mainstream tobacco control largely centers on measures to slow youth uptake, which will yield mortality and health gains, but will only reach its full impact 50 years from now.

    ‘There is an urgent need to accelerate progress to end cigarette smoking in adults. That requires fully implementing historically-validated tobacco control measures – especially tobacco taxes – and integrating new science-based reduced-risk products into tobacco control. Simultaneously, we need to pursue a long-term approach to nicotine that is coherent with, and proportionate to, the risks associated with other public health measures required to address psychoactive substances.

    ‘We consulted 120 key tobacco control leaders across the United States… They represent a broad swath of tobacco control experience and expertise, ranging from researchers and academics, to advocates, state and urban tobacco control staff, government officials, and local front-line workers. Their input is integrated into a proposed strategy to achieve the goal of reducing cigarette smoking in adults to less than 10 percent in all communities nationwide by 2024.

    ‘This is not a consensus report. We considered all inputs, and focus here on what represents the needed balance between what has worked to reduce smoking in the US, and additional steps that are now needed. These steps draw upon advances in technology and deeper insights into what drives behavior change.’

  • Supporting the small guy

    cigars photoThe Cause of Action Institute (CoA Institute) on Tuesday filed an amicus curiae brief in support of a challenge to a new regulation that threatens small premium-cigar businesses in the US.

    The CoA Institute filed its brief in support of the plaintiffs: the Cigar Association of America, the International Premium Cigar and Pipe Retailers Association, and Cigar Rights of America.

    These groups have brought a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration challenging a new regulation with what the CoA Institute described as far-ranging, negative economic impacts on consumers and small businesses engaged in the premium cigar industry.

    ‘The new regulation finalized by FDA unfairly targets America’s smaller-scale cigar manufacturers, trampling on a proud American heritage and eliminating economic opportunity for many small businesses,’ the CoA Institute said in a press note.

    “Common sense appears to be dead at the FDA,” Patrick Massari, assistant vice president at the CoA Institute was quoted as saying. “Inexplicably, the FDA ignored tens of thousands of comments from the premium cigar industry, Congress, local government, media, and the citizens of the United States, particularly those affected in ways large and small by FDA’s power grab. Under this new rule, the tradition of premium, hand-rolled cigars handed down by generations will turn into a corporate profit mill.”

    ‘In its brief, CoA Institute argues that FDA failed to conduct a legally sufficient cost-benefit analysis, as required by federal law and Executive Orders issued by President Clinton and President Obama,’ the press note said. ‘Specifically, President Clinton’s 1993 EO 12866 requires that “[e]ach agency shall tailor its regulations to impose the least burden on society, including individuals, businesses of differing sizes, and other entities (including small communities and governmental entities), consistent with obtaining the regulatory objectives, taking into account, among other things, and to the extent practicable, the costs of cumulative regulations. [emphasis added]’

    ‘The limited analysis FDA produced either omitted or glossed over several important costs:

    • First, premium cigar prices will substantially increase for all consumers as a result of the rule;
    • Second, the sheer compliance costs of FDA’s regulation will be so high that smaller, family-owned businesses will no longer be able to comply;
    • Third, the resulting government-defined marketplace will cripple consumer choice and bar future innovation.

    ‘Many companies will likely have no choice but to sell out to larger corporations, which will then dominate the market as regulation-protected monopolies.

    ‘The FDA itself admits that it failed to do any analysis on consumer choice, saying: “We lack a baseline estimate of consumer valuation of tobacco product variety, making it impossible to estimate how consumers who continue to use tobacco products would value the potential loss of variety due to product exit under this final rule”. Instead, the FDA ignored this essential element of cost-benefit analysis by pretending that such data does not exist.

    ‘In its brief, CoA Institute calls on the Court to order FDA to reopen its cost-benefit analysis and to vacate and remand the final rule.’

  • Attempt to rescue e-cigs

    rescue photoLegislation was introduced in the US’ House of Representatives on Thursday that, if adopted, might prevent the electronic cigarette business from falling into a state of de facto prohibition, according to a story by Guy Bentley for the Washington Examiner.

    The bipartisan legislation would alter Food and Drug Administration rules requiring products deemed to be tobacco products that came on the market after February 15, 2007 (the ‘grandfather’ date), to undergo a prohibitively expensive and complex approval process.

    The grandfather date is especially damaging for electronic cigarette businesses because almost all vapor products were launched after February 2007.

    There have been various and varying estimates of the cost of the premarket tobacco application process but all those estimates suggest that the small- and medium-sized companies that have pioneered the electronic cigarette revolution would not be able to afford it.

    The only players that would be left in the electronic cigarette space would be major tobacco companies that could afford to comply with the FDA regulations, Bentley wrote.

    Not only would a change in the grandfather date keep different product options open for those trying to quit smoking, it would save tens of thousands of jobs and thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses from closing.

    But while the proposed legislation would give vital breathing space to the electronic cigarette industry, the two congressmen who introduced the legislation were eager to stress consumer safety and reducing tobacco-related harms as the primary objectives of their reforms.