Federal Government Announces New Tobacco Control Strategy

The Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, the HHS Assistant Secretary for Health, Howard K. Koh, and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg announced HHS's tobacco control strategic action plan Ending the Tobacco Epidemic and the FDA's new, prominent, and sometimes graphic proposed health warnings on cigarette packages and print advertisements at a press conference yesterday in Washington, DC.

Once finalized by 2012, the new messages will mark the first replacement of warnings that cigarette packs began carrying 25 years ago, and will cover half the front and back of each pack and 20 percent of the top of each ad, Sebelius said

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Tobacco Control Act) requires that cigarette packages and advertisements have larger and more visible graphic health warnings. The FDA, empowered by new authority obtained last year from Congress to regulate tobacco products, issued a proposed rule, Required Warnings for Cigarette Packages and Advertisements, proposing to modify the required warnings that appear on cigarette packages and in cigarette advertisements. These new required warnings would consist of nine new textual warning statements accompanied by color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.

“I think this day’s announcements are an exciting step forward,” Dr. Hamburg said. "When the rule takes effect, the health consequences of smoking will be obvious every time someone picks up a pack of cigarettes."

Here are the proposed warning statements:

WARNING: Cigarettes are addictive.
WARNING: Tobacco smoke can harm your children.
WARNING: Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease.
WARNING: Cigarettes cause cancer.
WARNING: Cigarettes cause strokes and heart disease.
WARNING: Smoking during pregnancy can harm your baby.
WARNING: Smoking can kill you.
WARNING: Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers.
WARNING: Quitting smoking now greatly reduces serious risks to your health.

The panelists told the audience that these actions are part of a broader federal anti-smoking strategy that will help all tobacco users quit and prevent all youth from starting with a goal of reducing smoking from 20 to 12 percent by 2020. It will also help bridge the disparities of the smoking habit among certain demographics such as pregnant women, low-income people, minorities, and people with mental illness and/or substance use disorders.

Although smoking rates among youth and adults had been declining for decades, national data shows that those declines are leveling off. They reminded the group of health advocates and students that tobacco remains the leading cause of premature and preventable death in the country, causing 443,000 deaths each year and one-third of all cancer deaths. An estimated 4,000 youths try a cigarette for the first time each day, and 1,000 become “lifetime” smokers.

“So, when this administration took office, we decided these actions weren’t changing, so our actions had to change,” Sebelius said.

“We know that most smokers want to quit,” Koh said, telling the group that the government want to make it as easy for people to quit as it is to buy a pack of cigarettes. “

"It will take renewed commitment from every sector of society to end the tobacco epidemic," Koh said.

The FDA is seeking public comment on the 36 proposed images until Jan. 9, 2011. The agency will select nine final warning statements and images by June 22 once they weigh in public comment and research. For more information on how to submit your comments, visit www.ofr.gov.