June 7 Daily News editorial

For almost half a century after the U.S. surgeon general warned of the dangers of smoking, the federal government steadfastly refused to exercise regulatory authority over cigarettes and other tobacco products. That’s expected to change over the next few days, when the Senate votes on House-approved legislation giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration broad authority to regulate the tobacco industry.

Public health officials and anti-smoking advocates view the legislation as history making. Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told Los Angeles Times writer Noam N. Levey that, “This would be the most significant change in the federal government’s approach to tobacco in history. It would fundamentally change the way tobacco is marketed, advertised and sold in this country.”

It would seem so. The legislation prohibits candy-flavored cigarettes, which have been popular with young people. It puts restrictions on marketing tobacco products. The industry could no longer advertise “light” cigarettes as less hazardous to smokers’ health. The legislation gives the federal agency authority to require larger warning labels on cigarette packs and restrict full-color advertising for cigarettes. The FDA could force reductions of nicotine levels and other cancer-causing chemicals in cigarettes.

What the legislation would not do is give the government the power to outlaw nicotine or tobacco products. That and the legislation’s other limits on federal oversight concern some public health officials. They argue that Congress is continuing to make too many concessions to an industry whose product is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the nation every year. Others, however, contend that prohibition would likely be no more successful with cigarettes than it was with alcohol, and stress that the amount of federal oversight the legislation allows is far better than none at all.

Indeed, the Tobacco industry has essentially been unregulated. For decades, tobacco companies successfully swatted down congressional attempts to impose government oversight. A presidential commission’s unanimous recommendation in 2001 that tobacco products be regulated by the FDA changed nothing. It generally was met with silence on Capitol Hill, where the tobacco industry had many allies.

But the industry’s influence on this issue suffered a major setback in 2007, with the release of a Harvard School of Public Health study. The study suggested that tobacco companies were not living up to their 1998 agreement with states to help reduce smoking by young people. The principle finding was that nicotine levels in cigarettes had steadily increased between 1997 and 2005.

The legislation Congress is posed to approve will enable the government to reverse that trend. This change, alone, makes the action worthwhile. Nicotine is an addictive, dangerous drug. Products containing it claim 440,000 lives and cost the nation $94.7 billion in health-care bills every year. Government regulatory authority over this drug is long overdue.