The Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) has launched its Searchable Tobacco Products Database, which will be used by convenience stores and other retailers to “help facilitate compliance with the law,” said CTP Director Brian King on Thursday.
The database includes a list of tobacco products—including e-cigarettes—that may be legally marketed in the United States that is designed to provide “key” information in a specific location, with easy-to-use search capabilities. The database, which can be accessed at www.fda.gov/searchtobacco, will be updated monthly, the agency said.
The launch is part of CTP’s plan following recommendations from the Reagan-Udall Foundation.
The database provides information on three categories of products:
- New tobacco products that received marketing authorization through one of FDA’s three pathways to market a new tobacco product.
- Pre-existing tobacco products established through a voluntary determination program (commercially marketed as of Feb. 15, 2007).
- Provisional tobacco products that were removed from review.
“CTP remains committed to enhanced transparency in a way that is useful, timely and user friendly,” said King. “We hope that this database will be an asset to stakeholders—including retailers—that will be used to help facilitate compliance with the law.”
At the time of launch, the database contains almost 17,000 tobacco products, with more than 12,000 being pre-existing tobacco products, the agency said.
For each entry in the database, the FDA includes information on the tobacco product, including the product name, company, category, sub-category, the authority permitting its sale in the United States, and the date of FDA action.
Links to regulatory and scientific documents, such as the order letter, decision summary, the environmental assessment (EA) and related documents associated with a tobacco product application, are also available on the website.
To help explain some of the terminology and context about the content of the database, the FDA has also developed the Searchable Tobacco Products Database, Additional Information webpage. The webpage includes answers to potential questions about the database, including a question related to unauthorized products with pending applications. The FDA cannot provide information on pending applications to protect confidential commercial information.
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