On March 11, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health voted 18-9 to pass proposed legislation to give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory control over tobacco products. A fee starting at about one cent per pack this year and growing to at least 5 cents per pack by 2018, generating $85 to $712 million per year, would fund the new FDA powers, committee staff said. Because no date has been set for the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee to consider the FDA bill, it is likely to come after March 31 when Congress returns from Easter break.   Companion legislation in the U.S. Senate was passed August 1, 2007 by the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) and still awaits a vote by the full Senate.

Although President George W. Bush is opposed to legislation to give the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products, the Louisville Courier-Journal noted that his successor in 2009 is likely to support the measure since all of the front-running presidential candidates -- U.S. Senators John McCain (R-Arizona), Barack Obama (D-Illinois), and Hillary Clinton (D-New York) -- are among those co-sponsoring the FDA bill in the Senate.

AWMA has long opposed this initiative because the bill would give unprecedented authority to the FDA to regulate the sale, marketing, distribution and manufacture of tobacco products in the U.S. This bill would give the FDA overly broad authority and even that agency has expressed opposition to this effort indicating that it is ill-suited to police the already heavily regulated tobacco industry.