Weaning America off nicotine

On Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of flavored cigarettes in the United States.

No longer will a citizen of a law-abiding age be able to walk into a convenience store and find tobacco products with chocolate, vanilla, clove or grape flavors (everything but menthol) on the shelves.

So while this is good news for health proponents who are concerned about these flavors appealing to children, it is disappointing for those who have enjoyed these products responsibly for years and now will have to go without. It may very well be a luxury worth losing for the health of our nation, but will it really do anything to keep our kids off the nicotine?

The FDA was given authority to push this ban through due to legislation that Barack Obama signed into law in late June. It authorized the FDA to regulate tobacco products as part of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Under this new law, the FDA may regulate how cigarettes are marketed and manufactured but cannot outright ban tobacco products altogether.

Now the agency is asking for a list of ingredients and additives from tobacco industries to be submitted by January, and by July labels such as “light,” “low” and “mild” will not be allowed on their products.

The case for banning flavored cigarettes appears to come from one 2004 study that examined flavored cigarette use in 17-year-olds. According to the study, 17-year-old smokers viewed flavored cigarettes as safer than regular tobacco. In fact, this age group was more than three times as likely to smoke flavored cigarettes than those over the age of 25.

But when the legal age for smoking cigarettes is 18, can the 17-year-old age group really be considered the nation’s youth?

Congress seems to think so.

“Banning the marketing and use of strawberry, chocolate and other flavored cigarettes will help slow the rate of addiction among youth smokers, preventing disease and saving millions in health care costs down the line,” Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, told the New York Times.

It is true that it’s in everyone’s interest to keep children from smoking. On average, 3,600 children and teenagers begin smoking every day, and of those first-time smokers, 1,100 become daily smokers later in life.

Even so, this new legislation seems to be less about keeping children off tobacco and more about weaning the American public at large off their nicotine addiction. To push its point even further, the FDA is “examining options”  for regulating menthol cigarettes.

Leading tobacco companies such as Winston-Salem-based Reynolds American Inc.  and Lorillard Inc. have introduced a lawsuit  with the intention of blocking several provisions in the law that gave the FDA this power in the first place.