Monday, March 12, 2007 | 7:35 a.m.
T h e Food and Drug Administration commissioner said last week that the government should not regulate tobacco - an astonishing declaration for the man who not only is charged with guarding Americans' health but also is an oncologist.
Legislation introduced in Congress last month would rightly give the FDA oversight of the marketing, sales and manufacture of tobacco products, including the authority to limit nicotine levels.
Nonetheless, FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach told the Associated Press that he suspects lowering nicotine levels will prompt smokers to adversely alter their habits in order to obtain the desired amounts of nicotine.
But a study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute - an agency Eschenbach once headed - suggests that reducing nicotine levels in tobacco products neither kindled smokers' desires to light up more often nor induced them to inhale more deeply, a nicotine expert told the AP. Lowering the amount of nicotine may actually help smokers wean themselves off of the addictive substance.
Eschenbach acknowledges that the FDA is charged with determining what is safe for Americans to use or consume, but he believes regulating tobacco products could give the impression that the FDA considers them safe.
With current warning labels, which could be made even more explicit under the pending legislation, and widespread anti-smoking campaigns, it is hard to fathom that FDA regulation would suddenly make people think that any amount of tobacco use is safe.
Furthermore, the measure doesn't force the FDA to alter nicotine levels. It merely gives the agency the authority to do so. If lowering the levels would help save lives or help people quit smoking, then it should be done.
Tobacco-related illnesses kill more than 430,000 people annually in the United States, 2,600 of whom die in Nevada.
This bill would not ask the FDA to say that tobacco products are safe. It would, however, allow the agency charged with monitoring the public's health to determine how much nicotine is in these products rather than leaving that up to the companies that profit from people remaining - or becoming - addicted to smoking.
archive
