FDA Seeks Nicotine Reduction

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press | May 25, 2007

The Food and Drug Administration should regulate tobacco and develop a plan to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes, the Institute of Medicine urged yesterday.

Its report calls on Congress and the president to give FDA the authority to enforce standards for nicotine reduction and to regulate companies' claims that their products reduce exposure or risk.

"We propose aggressive steps to end the tobacco problem — that is, to reduce tobacco use so substantially that it is no longer a significant public health problem. This report offers a blueprint for putting the nation on a course for achieving that goal over the next two decades," the director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy at the University of Virginia School of Law, Richard Bonnie, said. Mr. Bonnie was chairman of the committee that prepared the report.

"Unfortunately, cigarettes are one of the most dangerous consumer products ever marketed," Mr. Bonnie said at a briefing.

The report notes that cigarettes are unique in that they contain carcinogens and would be banned under federal law if these statutes did not expressly exempt tobacco.

A bill currently before Congress would give FDA authority to regulate tobacco, but the head of the agency has expressed skepticism. Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach said that if the FDA reduced nicotine levels in cigarettes, people would change their smoking habits to maintain current levels of nicotine.

"We could find ourselves in the conundrum of having made a decision about nicotine only to have made the public health radically worse. And that is not the position FDA is in; we approve products that enhance health, not destroy it," Dr. von Eschenbach said in an Associated Press interview in March.

Cigarette maker Philip Morris USA has been supporting the legislation that would give FDA power to regulate the industry.

"FDA regulation creates a uniform set of federal standards for the manufacture and marketing of all tobacco products," the chairman of Philip Morris USA, Michael Szymanczyk, said earlier this year.