On Monday, October 19th, the FDA submitted the final draft of their proposed tobacco regulations to the White House Office of Management & Budget. The stated goal of these proposed regulations is stamping out youth consumption of tobacco, whether in cigarette, e-cigarette, cigar, or pipe form. Just a few of the items under consideration are:

 

1: Fees requiring the minimum purchase price of cigars to be no less than $10 each

2: Required FDA approval of all cigar blends released after February 15, 2007

3: A ban on all free goods or promotional material

4: Restrictive packaging

5: Restrictive monetary demands on the manufacturer when introducing new blends

 

For example, if your favorite blender wanted to manufacture a new cigar using four distinct tobaccos in its blend, and he wanted to create this cigar in five different sizes, he would need to submit the "ingredients" to the FDA and pay over $55,000 in fees. Doing so doesn't guarantee that the blend would be approved, but rather it would just be a required step in the process of potentially bringing something new to market. In case you were wondering, out of the past 4,000 tobacco-related applications sent in for review, the FDA has only managed to work their way through 34 applications and only 1 has been approved. We could potentially never see another new cigar on our shelves. You could potentially never see another new cigar in your humidor.

 

The OMB now has less than 90-days to review the FDA's proposal, and any new laws or regulations impacting the premium tobacco industry are expected to be enacted 30 days after. While the OMB has at times taken longer than 90 days to publish their findings, just yesterday 11 Senators delivered a letter to the office asking for a quick resolution to this issue - so this may move quickly.

 

Unfortunately we aren't exactly sure what the FDA is suggesting. Nobody knows what their final proposal includes. Premium tobacco products may be considered their own entity and not lumped in with cheap gas station tobaccos and e-cigarettes; just as likely, all of these items could be considered the same.

TAKE ACTION NOW!