Cigar Smokers Let Your Voice Be Heard!
When Barack Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in 2009, regulatory power over tobacco was granted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Initially the FDA focused on cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, but earlier this year the agency announced plans to extend its authority to other tobacco products, including cigars.
The FDA has outlined two approaches to doing this. The agency’s so-called Option 2 would create an exemption for premium cigars, allowing them to be sold under less scrutiny than cigarettes.
Option 2 would leave the door open for eventual Cuban imports.
The FDA’s Option 1, however, would be very bad news for new cigars of all kinds, including Cubans. Option 1 treats cigars just like cigarettes. Under the Tobacco Control Act, any tobacco products that were not commercially marketed in the United States as of February 15, 2007, must receive explicit approval by the FDA before being introduced.
Winning approval is virtually impossible. As of my last coverage on the topic, only two new cigarettes had ever made it through the process, while thousands of product applications continue to languish in bureaucratic limbo.
There were a lot of cigars legally on the market in 2007, but obviously none of them were Cuban. We don’t know yet know which option the FDA will choose, but Option 1 would have a disastrous impact on innovation in the cigar market. All Cuban imports and any new Cuban blends would have to get past FDA regulators, whose record on cigarettes suggests that this would be a very high hurdle.
It's plausible that President Obama will be remembered both for helping end the Cuban embargo and for signing the poorly crafted Tobacco Control Act that creates a de facto embargo on Cuban cigars all over again.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed for something like Option 2. It is possible that the FDA could move the date for grandfathering in new products forward from 2007; several congressmen, including Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, recently urged the FDA to do so in light of the law's impact on cigars and e-cigarettes.
*Some info from Jacob Grier is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. This article first appearedon Reason.com.
