At a hearing before the Senate Health and Education Committee February 26, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) signaled his intention to try again to give the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate tobacco products.

It may be too late to help the more than 40 million people who are already “hooked on this highly addictive product,” Kennedy said, but the FDA could “play a major role in breaking the gruesome cycle that seduces millions of teenagers into a lifetime of addiction and premature death.”

Kennedy noted that a “bipartisan, bicameral” bill that has been introduced in the House and Senate is “familiar”—“It is the same bill that passed the Senate in 2004 and that we introduced in the last Congress. However, in this new Congress, the likelihood of passage is greatly enhanced. We believe that 2007 is the year that legislation empowering the FDA to regulate tobacco products will finally become law.”

Kennedy noted that it is not possible to ban cigarettes entirely---“a ban that would leave 40 million people without a way to satisfy their drug dependency.” But he pointed out that the tobacco industry is well aware that most of the people who smoke began to do so as children, and the industry’s future depends on making tobacco products appealing to today’s young people.

With that in mind, the bills now before Congress concentrate on giving the FDA authority to ban tobacco advertising aimed at children and to enforce seriously laws and regulations already in place that are supposed to make it impossible for children under 18 to buy cigarettes face-to-face, or to obtain them from vending machines and self-service displays. The bills also call for stronger warnings on all cigarettes and smokeless tobacco packages, and in all print advertisements, that will explicitly describe the medical problems that can result from tobacco use. The FDA would be able to change those warning labels periodically, “to keep their impact strong.”

 Kennedy charged that tobacco companies chemically manipulate the nicotine in their products to make them more addictive, and he cited a recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health that found the average increase in cigarette nicotine yield between 1998 and 2005 was 11 percent. Under the proposed legislation, the companies would have to submit to the FDA for analysis any “reduced risk” cigarettes they develop, in the same way drug manufacturers must submit new drugs.

Kennedy noted that tobacco companies have frequently testified before his and other congressional committees in past years on proposals to give the FDA regulatory authority, and he said this time around he plans to go directly to committee markup of the legislation, the final step before the bill comes to the floor for a vote. The Senate bill, S. 625, and the House bill, H.R. 1108, can be read and tracked at http://thomas.loc.gov.