Center for Tobacco Products News

A Food and Drug Administration scientist has found a lower risk of dying from lung cancer among menthol smokers compared to non-menthol smokers at ages 50 and over.

The scientist, Brian Rostron of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, studied data of 6,074 smokers from 1987 to 2006, including 1,417 who smoked only menthol cigarettes.

The lower risk of dying from lung cancer was found in all age groups, in men and women, and with black smokers compared with white smokers.

WASHINGTON— Continuing the week’s anti-tobacco assault, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin issued “Preventing Tobacco Use Among Youth & Young Adults,” a new report that “describes the epidemic of tobacco use among youth ages 12 through 17 and young adults ages 18 through 25.” Along with health issues, it “examines the social, environmental advertising and marketing influences that encourage youth and young adults to initiate and sustain tobacco use.”

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled in favor of tobacco companies that challenged on constitutional grounds a U.S. Food and Drug Administration rule requiring cigarette-makers to label tobacco products with graphic images of rotting teeth, cancerous lungs, a corpse, and other unpleasant depictions of the ills of tobacco.

Judge Leon, who granted the companies’ request last year for a preliminary injunction preventing the FDA’s labeling requirement from going into effect this September, wrote in his ruling: “The government has failed to carry both its burden of demonstrating a compelling interest and its burden of demonstrating that the rule is narrowly tailored to achieve a constitutionally permissible form of compelled commercial speech.”