Senate passes the most sweeping tobacco-control bill - USATODAY.com

Senate passes the most sweeping tobacco-control bill

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

Cigarettes marketed as "light," "low" tar or "mild" will be banned within a year as part of a historic bill the Senate passed 79-17 on Thursday.

The legislation, approved by the House in April, is the most sweeping tobacco-control measure ever passed by Congress. It goes now to President Obama, who has said he will sign it.

The bill, which gives the Food and Drug Adminstration the authority to regulate tobacco products, comes after more than a decade of congressional debate and a half-century since the U.S. Surgeon General's 1964 landmark report linking smoking to lung cancer.

"It's long overdue," said Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

The bill will dramatically affect how tobacco is marketed as the bill's provisions are phased in:

• Immediately, tobacco makers can no longer make claims that their products pose fewer health risks.

• Within three months, candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes are banned, and the FDA can extend that ban to cigars and moist snuff, where such flavorings are more common. Menthol is exempt.

• Within nine months, the FDA must publish marketing restrictions that will take effect six months later.

• Within 12 months, new warning labels will be placed on smokeless tobacco products.

• Within 15 months, tobacco companies must disclose the ingredients in their products.

• Within two years, the FDA must issue rules on graphic warrnings for cigarettes that will cover half the pack. The labels will take effect 15 months later.

How exactly the market will change is unclear, says Tommy Payne, executive vice president of RJ Reynolds, the nation's second-largest tobacco maker. His company opposed the legislation, which major health groups supported.

Payne says the bill bans "light" or "ultra-light" cigarettes, which are slightly more than half the market, but it does not specify acceptable words for differentiating them from other cigarettes.

Payne says companies may need to use different packaging colors so smokers can find cigarettes with less tar. He says most currently package menthol cigarettes in some shade of green.

"Consumers have become acclimated to color coding," so removing terms such as "light" won't have a big impact, says Nik Modi, a tobacco industry analyst for global financial services company UBS.

Tagging a cigarette "light" misleads smokers into thinking the product is less harmful, says Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Myers says research shows "absolutely no health benefit" to smoking a "light" or "low tar" cigarette. "Consumers smoke them differently," he says. "They inhale more deeply and smoke them further down."