Regulators to get new power with anti-smoking vote

Washington: The US Congress' strongest anti-smoking law in decades gives regulators new power to limit nicotine in cigarettes, drastically curtail advertising and ban candied tobacco products aimed at young people.

At the same time, it orders the Food and Drug Administration, the country's main regulator of foodstuffs and medicines, not to ban either cigarettes or nicotine, the substance that makes smoking tobacco addictive.

Advocates of the legislation say the changes are necessary to marshal government powers to save some of the 400,000 people who die in the United States from smoking every year and to reduce the $100 billion (Dh367 billion) in annual health care costs linked to tobacco.

The legislation, one of the most dramatic anti-smoking initiatives since the US surgeon general's warning 45 years ago that tobacco causes lung cancer, would give the FDA authority to regulate the content, marketing and advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products.

On nicotine, it specified that the level can be set by the FDA but not to zero.

Officials of Philip Morris, USA, the largest cigarette manufacturer, were party to the negotiations.

"This legislation represents the strongest action Congress has ever taken to reduce tobacco use, the leading preventable cause of death in the United States," declared Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids, which also participated in negotiations.

Thursday's 79-17 Senate vote sends the measure back to the House of Representatives, which in April passed a similar but not identical version. House acceptance of the Senate bill would send it directly to President Barack Obama, who supports the action. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and the senior House member, said that "from what I have seen so far, I believe it will be possible for us to accept their bill and send it right on to the president".

Obama's signature would then add tobacco to other huge, nationally important areas that have come under greater government supervision since his presidency began on January 20. Those include banking, housing and autos. Still to come, if Congress can agree: healthcare.

Supporters of government regulation of tobacco have struggled for more than a decade to overcome powerful resistance from the industry and elsewhere. In 2000, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the FDA did not have the authority under current law to regulate tobacco products, and the former George W. Bush administration opposed several previous efforts by Congress to write a new law.