FDA Moves Forward on Implementation of Tobacco Law
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced an action regarding the implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The Agency has officially established the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC).
The Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee is tasked with providing advice, information, and recommendations to the Commissioner of Food and Drugs on health and other issues relating to tobacco products. The committee will be asked to consider a variety of topics including:
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o identifying the effects of the alteration of the nicotine yields from tobacco products;
o reporting on the impact of the use of menthol in cigarettes on the public health; and
o advising on an application for modified risk (use of descriptors such as “light”) tobacco product.
The TPSAC will consist of 12 members, including the Chair to be selected by the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, from among experts knowledgeable in the fields of medicine, medical ethics, science, or technology involving the manufacture, evaluation or use of tobacco products. There will be nine voting and three non-voting members. Of the nine voting members, seven will be health care professionals practicing in the area of oncology, pulmonology, cardiology, toxicology, pharmacology, addiction, or any other relevant specialty. One member will be an officer or employee of a state or local government or the federal government, and the final member will be a representative of the general public.
The three non-voting members will be identified with industry interests. These members will include one representative of the tobacco manufacturing industry, one representative of the tobacco growers, and one representative of the small business manufacturing industry.
Three related Federal Register documents are on display today and being published tomorrow; one announces the establishment of the new advisory committee, one requests nominations for voting members to serve on the committee, and one requests nominations for non-voting members.
For further information please access the following link and then scroll to Food and Drug Administration.
© Copyright: Aug. 25, 2009 Fda
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The FDA is forbidden to do anything about the “farm” areas of the cigarette business. Therefore, some 450 tobacco pesticides and their residues…and dioxin from the chlorine pesticides…and the carcinogenic levels of radiation from the use of certain phosphate fertilizers will all be ignored.
That will all remain the domain of the USDA which has long approved those things.
Study or legitimate claims about any health issues from other additives or from the tobacco itself will be impossible without consideration of the combination effects, especially regarding the cancer-promotion and Immune suppression characteristics of dioxins.
Further, the FDA may lower nicotine levels to a useless trace…just enough to keep this a “drug” matter. That is effectively Prohibition—as serious as it would be to remove all but a trace of alcohol from wine. To so reduce nicotine is to reduce or eliminate the benefits of nicotine for stress relief, alertness, digestive relief, appetite suppression and even symptomatic relief for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Those benefits come through even despite the inevitable harms from industrial adulterants…which goes far to explain why people smoke. To say it’s “peer pressure” or “to look cool” is an insulting joke…a distraction from the medical benefits aspect.
So— the FDA will remove the benefits of tobacco, while letting the most undeniably deadly contaminants remain. This may be the worst case of government working against the public interest, and for the the interests of some of the most health damaging industries on the earth…and for their investors and insurers.