Educate smokers about dangers

The federal government is taking its first steps toward regulating tobacco companies under a law that was signed last year by President Barack Obama.
Beginning in June, the Food and Drug Administration will compel cigarette makers to supply a list of the ingredients in their products. While this may sound reasonable, the truth is that it is unnecessary given the limited benefits, potential pitfalls and the already declining rate of smoking in the United States.
For starters, the number of smokers in the United States is steadily falling. According to a recent Associated Press report, about 20.6 percent of American adults smoke cigarettes. That’s down from 24 percent just 10 years ago. In addition, the number of cigarettes sold declined 12.6 percent in the third quarter last year compared to the same quarter a year before.
The data show that health concerns, smoking bans and increasing taxes are cutting into the number of smokers. Efforts to decrease smoking should center on these areas.
In South Carolina, for example, much could be done to curtail smoking if lawmakers would simply increase the state’s ridiculously low cigarette tax. South Carolina’s tax is a notorious 7 cents per pack. Even increasing it by 50 cents could have a tremendous impact on reducing the number of smokers in this state.
Under the new federal law, the FDA will require tobacco companies to report exactly what’s in their products. It will then publish a list of harmful and potentially harmful ingredients by June of 2011.
The collection of data seems reasonable on its face. After all, as Lawrence R. Deyton, the director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, told AP recently, “Tobacco products today are really the only human-consumed product that we don’t know what’s in them.”
However, there’s legitimate concern the new law could give people a false sense of security about some cigarettes. It’s already a known fact that cigarettes and other tobacco products cause cancer. The best option is to quit using them. Suggesting, even unintentionally, that one cigarette may be safer or contain fewer harmful ingredients than another could mislead consumers.Furthermore, this change is the first step in a law that gives the government broad control over an otherwise legal product. The law lets government require larger warnings on cigarettes, ban candy flavored cigarettes and restrict how cigarette companies advertise. There’s real reason to be concerned about such restrictions.
Anti-tobacco advocates favor this bill and see value in the government’s ability to identify dangerous chemicals and those that can enhance cigarettes’ addictiveness. FDA could then develop standards and ban some ingredients or combinations of ingredients, according to the AP report. But cigarettes still would be a dangerous product.
The bottom line is that cigarette use is declining even without these requirements. A better approach would be for anti-tobacco advocates to continue working toward higher cigarette taxes in states like South Carolina. And states should implement better education programs using more of the billions of dollars they get every year from the 1998 tobacco settlement, their state tobacco taxes, and federal funding. Such efforts would go further than this federal law can to ensure more individuals are informed enough to decide that smoking is a potentially fatal choice.