Clear the Air

 
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 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 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.

Timeline for Final Regulations
The Tobacco Control Act requires FDA to issue final regulations requiring these color graphics by June 22, 2011. It also specifies that the requirement for the new health warnings on cigarette packages and advertisements will take effect 15 months after issuance of this final rule.

View the Proposed Graphic Warning Images:
PDF format (PDF 13 MB) The PDF contains a composite of all of the proposed images.

JPEG format (6 MB) The zipped folder contains all of the compressed images.

Placement Location on Cigarette Packages
The Tobacco Control Act requires that the nine graphic health warnings appear on the upper portion of the front and rear panels of each cigarette package and comprise at least the top 50 percent of these panels.

Placement Location on Cigarette Advertisement
It also requires that they appear in each cigarette advertisement, and occupy at least 20 percent of the advertisement. For advertisements with a surface area less than 12 square inches, the proposed rule provides a subset of proposed color graphics to accompany the nine textual warning statements.

Public Comment
FDA is seeking public comment on the proposed rule from Friday, November 12, 2010 through Tuesday, January 11, 2011. To submit an official comment during this time period:

• Go to www.regulations.gov and insert docket number FDA-2010-N-0568 into the “search” box and follow the prompts.
• Send a fax, with your comments, to 301-827-6870.
• Mail/Hand delivery/Courier (for paper, disk, or CD-ROM submissions) to the Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Room 1061, Rockville, MD 20852.

All comments should be identified by Docket ID No. FDA-2010-N-0568. It is only necessary to send one set of comments.

Tags: FDA, Federal policies, tobacco

The U.S. House of Representatives today passed, and President Obama has just signed,  important legislation to provide health insurance for children funded through a 61.66 cents per pack increase in the federal tobacco excise tax. The legislation will provide health care coverage for approximately 4 million more children in the country.

The SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) legislation previously had passed both chambers of Congress only to be vetoed by then-President Geore W. Bush.

The tobacco tax increase will have a dramatic impact on public health. According to projections from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids the tax will result in:

- Increase in total number of kids alive today who will not become smokers:
1,992,000

- Number of current adult smokers in the US who will quit: 1,020,000

- Number of smoking-affected births avoided over next five years: 248,000

- Number of total smokers saved from future smoking-caused death: 905,000

- 5-year health care savings from fewer smoking-affected pregnancies & births:
$423.2 million

- 5-year health care savings from fewer smoking-caused heart attacks & strokes:
$493.3 million

- Long-term healthcare savings in the US from adult & youth smoking declines:
$44.5 billion

For West Virginia this will result in:

- Fewer kids becoming tobacco-addicted adults: 17,100

- Fewer current adult smokers: 10,600

- Future smoking deaths prevented: 8,200

- Future state health care savings: $400 million

- Medicaid share of future health savings: $96.7 million

These projections are based on research findings that a 10% cigarette price increase reduces youth smoking rates by 6.5%, adult rates by 2%, and total consumption by 4%. Kids stopped from becoming addicted adult smokers or from dying from smoking are from all kids alive today. Reduced adult deaths is from current adult smokers. Future healthcare savings accrue over the lifetimes of persons who stop smoking or never start because of the cigarette tax increase. Savings are in 2004 dollars. The Medicaid Share of Future Health Savings amounts for each state represent the future reductions to total healthcare expenditures by each state’s Medicaid program.

Tags: Federal Policy, health care, SCHIP, tobacco tax