New FDA rules curtail tobacco ads, sales
Move regulates marketing aimed at youths, teens
WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration unveiled rules yesterday that will severely restrict the way the tobacco industry can advertise and sell cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products, especially marketing efforts designed to appeal to children and teenagers.
The rules, which take effect June 22, are part of broad new powers granted to the FDA by Congress last year, when it passed a landmark law to regulate the $89 billion tobacco industry. The law prevents the FDA from banning nicotine or tobacco, but it gives the agency vast authority to regulate the ingredients in tobacco products and the way they are distributed, sold, and marketed.
“This is truly a historic announcement in our country’s public health history,’’ said Howard Koh, assistant secretary for health. “This is designed to prevent our children from becoming the next generation of Americans to die early from tobacco-related illnesses.’’
In the first legal challenge to the new law, a federal judge in January knocked down two proposed rules. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Lorillard, the country’s second- and third-largest tobacco producers, argued that certain provisions violated their First Amendment rights to free speech. They filed a complaint in Kentucky, the state with the highest number of adult smokers.
Judge Joseph McKinley struck down a rule that would limit advertising to black text with no graphics except in adult magazines or in retail establishments open only to adults. The judge ruled that companies could use imagery and colors to communicate “what the product is and who makes it.’’ That ruling would allow R.J. Reynolds, for instance, to continue using a drawing of a camel in its advertising for Camel cigarettes.
The FDA is appealing that part of the ruling. While the appeal is pending, the agency has not said whether it will enforce the rule regarding the use of color and imagery in advertising.
Tobacco advertising in this country dates to Colonial times. As health concerns about tobacco grew in the 1960s, the federal government began to rein in marketing. In 1969, Congress banned cigarette ads on television and radio. Other restrictions followed, including the 1998 legal settlement between four major tobacco companies and 46 states that prohibited them from targeting youths.
But antismoking groups and public health organizations argue that tobacco companies, which spend $35 million each day in marketing, have continued to advertise directly to teens and children in subtle ways. About 20 percent of high school students smoke, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Children are a particularly important target population for antismoking efforts, because studies show that 90 percent of smokers began the habit when they were younger than 18. Health officials say that each day, 4,000 people younger than 18 try cigarettes for the first time and 1,000 of them become lifelong smokers.
About 450,000 people in the United States die from smoking-related illnesses each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On average, smokers die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers.
