cspnet.com
Judge rules that New York City flavor ban is allowed under FDA law
NEW YORK — A federal district court judge has issued an order upholding a New York City ordinance that bans the sale of all flavored tobacco products, except cigarettes, that contain a constituent or additive that imparts a characterizing flavor other than the taste or aroma of tobacco, menthol, mint or wintergreen.
Fourteen NATO retail members submitted comments electronically via the federal government’s www.regulations.gov Web site, in response to the FDA’s proposed Tobacco Products Violation Reporting Form.
The FDA is proposing to allow the public and other stakeholder organizations (including anti-tobacco groups) to report possible retail violations of the FDA’s tobacco regulations by using a new Violation Reporting Form. The FDA is planning to allow the reports to be filed over the telephone, over the Internet, through a smart phone application or by mail.
Ad Week
Noreen O’Leary
Just over a month ago, the Food and Drug Administration issued two requests for proposals for the government agency’s first tobacco public education campaigns, all of which will target teens.
The FDA was granted the authority to regulate tobacco products by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Act, signed into law in 2009, and could spend up to $600 million on the combined budgets over the course of five years. The first RFP is aimed at preventing tobacco use among youth, aged 13-17, with a budget ceiling of $390 million.
WRAl.com
By Laura Leslie
Governor Bev Perdue, Senator Richard Burr, and Congressman David Price were on hand for this morning’s ribbon-cutting at Medicago, a Quebec-based vaccine maker that’s figured out how to use tobacco plants to produce flu vaccine – bringing in 85 jobs and $11 million in investment along the way.
Huffington Post
We have an FDA who hasn’t done their job in protecting us from listeria from Cantaloupes, Salmonella from lettuce, mercury from fish, poor health conditions in slaughter houses. Yet this same FDA wants to ban Menthol cigarettes in spite of being opposed by almost every police organization in this country. How will we enforce it? Will police stop and taste people’s cigarettes? What will happen is the companies will manufacture overseas, (more loss of jobs), and create a whole new group of violent smugglers. We have put a notice on cigarettes that they are harmful to health and limited the advertising, (you can lead a horse to water,etc).
By Maggie Fox
A federal judge blocked a U.S. rule requiring tobacco companies to display graphic images on packs of cigarettes on Monday, saying cigarette companies were likely to win their argument that the law violates free speech rights, Reuters reported.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon sided with tobacco companies in their fight against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s requirement that cigarette packs carry the images, which include pictures of diseased mouths and a person smoking through a tracheostomy tube in the neck.
Editors Note:
In the previous post we alerted our readers to the fact that as a result of the Center for Tobacco Products overwhelming large budget they are able to work simultaneously on many fronts–including the award of hundreds of million dollars in grants which will purchase both technical and political support. We also identified the recently initiated study on the establishment of nicotine standards.
As expected when an agency embarks upon a regulatory pilgrimage studies come out of the woodwork. For years it has been accepted that nicotine per se does not constitute a threat to public health. With the new nicotine standards program ready to take off, one might expect the following research to emerge.