WASHINGTON -- Smokers might soon find themselves examining cigarette packs the same way they examine a bag of chips or a can of soda: scanning through a list of ingredients--except instead of counting calories or protein, they will be monitoring the amount of nicotine or formaldehyde. An announcement made by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on March 30 suggests that consumers might be seeing harmful compounds listed on cigarette packs by this time next year.
"Today the FDA announced two separate actions ultimately aimed at protecting public health," said Dr. Lawrence Deyton, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, during a press conference on Friday. "The first announcement asked the tobacco industry to submit information on harmful and potentially harmful chemicals in tobacco products."
(For details on the second announcement, regarding the process for companies that seek to advertise or market a tobacco product as less harmful or associated with reducing the risk of tobacco-related disease, watch for tomorrow's CSP Daily News and Tobacco E-News.)
As reported in a Morgan Keegan/CSP Daily News Flashon Friday, the FDA has released a guidance document listing 93 harmful and potentially harmful constituents (HPHCs) found in cigarettes, roll your own (RY) and smokeless products. Tobacco manufacturers will now be required to provide the FDA with the levels of these HPHCs found in their merchandise.
Required by the Family Smoking Prevention & Tobacco Control Act, this list was established based on recommendations made by the FDA's Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC), public input and the FDA's own review of the information.
Describing the agency's reasoning behind the requirement, Deyton said that tobacco products "are the only mass-consumed product where consumers do not know what's in them--today we are ending that era. ... For the first time, all tobacco manufacturers and importers will be required to report the quantities of harmful and potentially harmful chemicals in every regulated tobacco product in the United States."
The agency said that it recognizes, however, that the industry may be unable to meet the deadline due to current testing limitations. In recognition of this situation, the draft guidance identifies 20 HPHCs that are representative of the full list and for which testing methods are well established and widely available. The FDA said that it intends to focus reporting enforcement on these 20 HPHCs during 2012, and that it intends to make information about the amount of HPHCs in specific products available to the public in a consumer-friendly format by April 2013.
A timeline has not been set for when information on the other 73 HPHCs will be required.
But don't start picturing "nutritional information" labels on cigarette packs just yet--the FDA is still determining how exactly they will share this data.
"We're doing research as to how best to communicate that information in a consumer-friendly way," Deyton said. "It's very important information, and it's important to get it out in the right way so that consumers understand it."
Most tobacco manufacturers are still reviewing the guidelines to determine what impact it might have on their business.
"We've known it's coming, so it's something we've been preparing for," said David Sylvia, director of strategy and business development for Altria Group Inc., Richmond, Va., parent company of Philip Morris USA. "Now that we actually have the draft guidance, we'll be able to get a better idea of exactly what they're requiring."
Although Altria anticipated this move, Sylvia admitted it's too soon to tell whether the HPHC testing and reporting will incur significant costs.
Click here to read the Harmful & Potentially Harmful Constituents Overview. Click here for the full list of HPHCs. And click here to read the Draft Guidance Identifying Initial 20 HPHCs to Report.
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