FP Report -- September 1999
AAFP, others write Supreme Court ...
Yes, FDA should regulate tobacco
In a legal brief filed in July, the Academy and 46 other public health advocates defend the Food and Drug Administration's right to regulate tobacco products.
"Nearly one in five eighth-graders and one in three 12th- graders smoke cigarettes," says the brief. "Each year, an estimated 1 million adolescents start smoking, and one-third of those adolescents will die prematurely as a result."
The brief's 47 signers support FDA's jurisdiction over the sale and advertising of tobacco products as a way to reduce children's access to tobacco and exposure to industry efforts to entice them to use tobacco.
"Manufacturers carefully engineer their tobacco products to deliver doses of nicotine to consumers, to create and satisfy nicotine addiction," says the brief. It upholds FDA's finding that the nicotine in tobacco products is "intended to affect the structure or any function of the body," thus bringing nicotine within the definition of "drugs."
The November 1998 settlement reached by 46 state attorneys general and major tobacco companies "does virtually nothing to restrict the sale of tobacco products to minors ... (and) does not require tobacco companies to disclose or alter their products' ingredients and additives, whereas the FDA could promulgate regulations on those topics," says the brief.
It seeks a reversal of the Fourth Circuit Court's ruling in August 1998 that the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act does not authorize the FDA to regulate the sale and promotion of tobacco products. The Supreme Court is expected to consider the case, FDA vs. Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp., et al., late this year or in 2000.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department. Copyright © 1999 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
FP Report | Headlines |AAFP Home | Search