A federal judge has turned down a request by the nation’s No. 2 cigarette-maker and others to immediately halt enforcement of new federal regulations on tobacco products. Their challenge to new U.S. Food and Drug Administration powers to regulate what tobacco firms say about their products has little likelihood of success, except on one point, Judge Joseph H. McKinley Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Bowling Green, Ky., ruled yesterday.

The nation’s two top cigarette-makers are boosting per-pack prices by 6 cents to 8 cents. Though the companies won’t say why, analysts believe it is to cover new user fees charged by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to pay for the costs of its new assignment to regulate tobacco. The increase on what manufacturers charge wholesalers seems unlikely to have a big effect on smoking, as this spring’s 61.66-cent-a-pack increase in federal excise taxes did.

A food industry group is voluntarily halting promotion of its nutrition-labeling program after federal regulators said such systems may be misleading consumers, officials with the group said yesterday. Industry leaders launched the “Smart Choices” program in August to identify foods that meet certain nutritional standards and then highlight them for consumers with a green label on package fronts.

About half of the millions of dollars in fees that will pay for the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of tobacco products will come from Henrico County-based Altria Group Inc. The FDA this week started collecting fees from the nation’s tobacco companies to fund the agency’s newly created Center for Tobacco Products. The user fees, which will be collected quarterly, are based on each company’s share of the U.S. tobacco market.

David Ferrell, 20, says he sees a good future in farming, even for tobacco, a crop that has sustained his family’s farm in Charlotte County for several generations.

Drugmaker Wyeth on Wednesday sued the Food and Drug Administration to block the sale of a generic rival to its intravenous antibiotic Zosyn, claiming the generic is not an equivalent product and could harm critically ill patients.

requiring all tobacco products, including cigars, be stored behind sales counters;
banning the terms “lights” or “mild” for newly introduced cigarettes and in advertising, beginning next year;
eventually requiring larger, stronger graphic warning labels for cigarettes;
requiring stronger warnings for smokeless tobacco;
requiring tobacco companies to report all ingredients used; and

As chief public-health officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Lawrence Deyton is credited with improving the agency’s tobacco-cessation programs for veterans. Now, Deyton will lead the Food and Drug Administration’s newly created Center for Tobacco Products, which is tasked with regulating the $80 billion U.S. tobacco industry.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation could be a boon for Big Tobacco, according to economists, analysts and some public-health advocates. The first federal effort to regulate a habit that has roughly one-eighth of all Americans puffing on cigarettes made in Richmond, and that generates tens of billions of dollars a year across the South, came with hope of attacking one of the nation’s top public-health problems.

Big changes are coming to the tobacco industry, and we’ve ramped up our coverage in the Richmond Times-Dispatch to keep you informed. Tobacco has long been a focus of our coverage—the business has been a key component of Virginia’s economy since soon after its founding at Jamestown. Now more than ever, Richmond is at the heart of the industry.

It took more than a decade for Congress to grant the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products. Now that the FDA has been given that job, the agency must set up a new regulatory office.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking public comments through Sept. 29 on how it should implement the regulation of tobacco products. The agency said in a federal register notice that it is particularly interested in approaches and actions it should consider to reduce tobacco use and protect public health. Comments can be submitted to the agency online at http://www.regulations.gov, or by mail to the Division of Dockets Management [HFA-305], Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Room 1061, Rockville, MD 20852. Comments should be identified with the docket number, FDA-2009-N-0294.

Here are some of the effective dates for FDA regulations of tobacco products:
  July 22, 2009: Use of descriptors such as “light” and “mild” prohibited for newly introduced cigarettes.
  Sept. 20, 2009: Artificial flavors other than menthol banned from cigarettes.
  Oct. 1, 2009: Start of fee collections from tobacco companies to fund the new FDA tobacco center.

Some of the newer smokeless products that tobacco companies are betting on may not be as good at helping smokers quit as the industry hopes, a new federally funded study by Virginia Commonwealth University shows. And that means they may not be the kind of reduced-harm product that is the industry’s latest hope, now that tobacco is regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Winning FDA designation as a “potential reduced-exposure product” could be worth billions of dollars, and a key element of that could be whether an item keeps smokers from lighting up.

President makes law the the nation’s strongest-ever anti-smoking bill and praises it for providing critically needed protections for children.