Family Smoking Prevention And Tobacco Control Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, this bill includes more than $5 billion in new tax increases on tobacco companies and gives sweeping control of the tobacco market to the FDA. Chairman DINGELL, discussing the salmonella outbreak last summer, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying that ``there's a total inability of the FDA to carry out its mission.'' This isn't the first Democrat to raise questions about the effectiveness of the FDA. It is therefore highly hypocritical of them to extend the agency's regulatory authority to a multi-billion dollar industry of which the FDA has no expertise.

This bill undermines the established purpose of the FDA. As FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in October 2007, the FDA is an agency intended to promote and protect the public health. In the Commissioner's opinion, requiring the FDA to ``approve'' tobacco products as a result of this bill would dramatically change the agency's focus. Mr. von Eschenbach stated that ``Associating any agency whose mission is to promote public health with the approval of inherently dangerous products would undermine its mission and likely have perverse incentive effects.''

While establishing FDA authority to regulate tobacco products, this bill would also retain the FTC's federal authority to regulate tobacco advertising and circulation. It would provide only limited pre-emption of state laws, allowing more rigid state restrictions on tobacco advertising.

This bill imposes undue bureaucratic and logistical hardships on tobacco manufacturers by burying them under multiple layers of regulation. It is important to remember that the sale of tobacco is legal in the United States and is credited with hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. We cannot afford to lose more American jobs especially when we are facing such economic challenges.

FDA regulation will have a devastating economic impact on small tobacco companies, their employees, associated businesses, and the largely rural communities which they support. Under this legislation they will not be able to comply with and afford what is sure to be a costly and complex regulatory regime.

There are some 350 small tobacco manufacturing companies throughout the United States. Together with their suppliers, vendors, distributors and tobacco growers, these companies employ thousands of people. Tobacco growing in particular has long been an important part of rural communities. As most of these companies are located in rural, economically depressed areas, the jobs, employee health and pension benefits and revenue they provide is critical to our local economies. While large tobacco companies can absorb the cost of FDA regulation, many of these smaller companies cannot. This legislation will force them to close their doors, leaving their employees jobless.

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