The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has announced its plans to regulate deemed tobacco products and it does not look good for cigar smokers. The agency chose Option 1, the harsher of the two options, which would treat premium cigars like other deemed tobacco products. It was considering Option 2, a provision that would have exempted premium cigars from this set of regulation, but the agency rejected that notion on a variety of grounds. In the document, FDA outlined its reasonings for choosing the harsher rule: After thorough review of the comments and the scientific evidence, FDA has concluded that deeming all cigars, rather than a subset, more completely protects the public health and therefore has adopted Option 1 in the final rule. FDA has concluded that: (1) All cigars pose serious negative health risks, (2) the available evidence does not provide a basis for FDA to conclude that the patterns of premium cigar use sufficiently reduce the health risks to warrant exclusion, and (3) premium cigars are used by youth and young adults Barring an injunction from a court or Congressional review, the new rules will go into effect in 90 days, Aug. 8. Products that were marketed prior to Feb. ...
↧