WASHINGTON -- Today, Mitch Zeller, the Director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, will be the featured speaker at a webcast at 2:00 P.M. Eastern, 1:00 P.M. Central, 12:00 Noon Mountain and 11:00 A.M. Pacific Time. Zeller will provide more details on his thoughts regarding key opportunities for the FDA to regulate tobacco products, including cigars, pipe tobacco and electronic cigarettes. To participate in the webinar, click on the link below a few minutes before the appropriate time on Wednesday, December 11 and turn on your computer speakers to view and listen to the webinar:
The PowerPoint slide presentation that Zeller will use during the webcast today can be found here. Below is a summary of the key points that Director Zeller will cover in his webcast presentation:
1.A new spectrum of tobacco products beyond traditional combustible tobacco products is arising and being developed.
2.The FDA’s main public health goals are to prevent youth from starting to use tobacco products, encourage adults who use tobacco to quit, reduce product harm and addictiveness, and develop a scientific base of research on tobacco products and continue meaningful product regulation.
3.The FDA just completed a public comment period on menthol cigarettes and the agency is supporting additional research to better understand the difference between menthol and non-menthol cigarettes (Note: The FDA is not required to take any regulatory action on the use of menthol in cigarettes; at this point, the agency has sought public comments on menthol cigarettes and is now reviewing those comments and will decide at a later date whether or not to consider any additional regulations on menthol cigarettes).
4.The FDA has submitted proposed regulations on other tobacco products (presumably cigars, pipe tobacco, electronic cigarettes and hookah tobacco) to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review prior to releasing the proposed regulations for public comments. (Note: The FDA issued a “Unified Agenda” notice last week that indicated the agency plans to release the new proposed regulations on other tobacco products sometime this month for public comment).
5.A main goal of the FDA is to have the United States be a country free of tobacco-related disease and death.
6.The FDA has an on-going debate about how to regulate tobacco products based on where the different kinds of tobacco products fit on a “continuum of risk” given the various toxicities of different tobacco products and how those products are used.
7.The FDA recognizes that different tobacco products deliver nicotine in different ways and that certain tobacco products may pose more individual risk than other tobacco products. This recognition has led the FDA to consider creating a comprehensive nicotine regulatory policy.
8.In early 2014, the FDA will launch a comprehensive media advertising campaign to reach at-risk youth with messages about the harms of tobacco products with a goal of preventing tobacco use and experimentation. The media campaign will target youth that are already experimenting with tobacco, male youth at-risk of smokeless tobacco use, multicultural youth (African American, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian/Alaskan Native), and LGBT youth.
For a complete summary of the FDA webcast, a copy of the set of PowerPoint slides used for the webcast can be found here.
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