Posted on 02/22/2014 4:29:42 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first time on Friday used its authority under a 2009 law to remove cigarettes from stores.
The FDA is forcing Jash International to stop selling and distributing its line of Sutra Bidi tobacco products in the U.S., and is giving retailers 30 days to pull the products from shelves.
The FDA said Jash did not submit updated applications for a line of cigarettes up for review under The Tobacco Control Act.
Companies with tobacco products on the market when the law passed in 2009 had until 2011 to prove they met new requirements. If they failed to do so, Congress gave the FDA the authority to declare the products illegal.
Friday marks the first time the FDA has ordered a manufacturer of cigarettes to withdraw a product from the market.
The tobacco industry has been under a sustained assault by the Obama administration and Democrats in recent months.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pledged in an op-ed on Friday that her administration was working “to make the next generation tobacco-free.”
In January, the surgeon general released a report detailing new health consequences related to smoking to mark the 50th anniversary of its landmark report tying smoking to lung cancer.
The surgeon general proposed new “end game” strategies aimed at the 42 million adult and 3 million young adult smokers in the U.S., such as hard-hitting media campaigns, tobacco excise taxes high enough to deter young smokers and easy-to-access cessation treatment.
Meanwhile, some retailers are also beginning to consider whether they want to sell cigarettes at all.
The drug store chain CVS Caremark earlier this month announced it would phase out cigarettes, chewing tobacco and cigars by Oct. 1.
"We've come to the conclusion that cigarettes have no place in a setting where health care is being delivered," said CVS Caremark CEO Larry Merlo.
Democrats are urging other stores to follow CVS’s lead, sending letters to Wal-Mart, Walgreen Co., Rite Aid Corp. and the National Association of Chain Drug Store urging them to stop sales of tobacco products.
In its Friday release, the FDA touted its new control over the tobacco industry.
“Historically, tobacco companies controlled which products came on and off the market without any oversight,” Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a statement.
“But the Tobacco Control Act gave the FDA, a science-based regulatory agency, the authority to review applications and determine which new tobacco products may be sold and distributed under the law in order to protect public health.”
No Indian cigarettes for you!
Nanny State PING!
Just to make sure I understand. Smoking tobacco is bad, smoking pot is good. Right?
I wish we could make the next generation commie pig (Like Sebelius) free.
Sounds like she intends to get them all addicted to marijuana and other drugs. There's more money in that anyway and the potheads and druggies are easier to control than smokers and alcohol users.
You are starting to get it.
Unemployment good. Work bad.
Killing babies good. Life bad.
Hedonism good. Morals bad.
And so it goes. The world is upsidedown.
Do you know about synthetic methamphetamine?
Prescribed by your loco physician.
Drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, don’t even think of picking up a cigarette or an e-cigarette. Your hamburger is next on the list. I remember when people were free. Unless there is revolution, in the future no one will remember being free.
Better a physician than your neighborhood heroin addict.
and without the felonies
/johnny
Bidis aren’t really something you can inhale easily.
Exactly what kind of health care does a chain drugstore provide? Other than the occasional flu shot, mabe.
Upside down is right. I pray that it can even be turned around :(
Gee, the libertarians will be all over this, they won’t talk about anything else except tobacco, just as they have been during the last 50 years of anti-tobacco laws, including during the Obama administration.
You mean you haven’t heard that Obama has already signed anti-tobacco legislation in the past and the libertarians don’t care, that they never uttered a peep?
Welcome to Dystopia. They want to make tobacco illegal, while at the same time a local fatcat lawyer with political ambitions is circulating a petition to legalize weed here in Florida. How many old hippie potheads have had car accidents because they were high? Lots of them, at least around here. How many people have had car accidents as the result of smoking a cigarette? None at all. But in the new social reality, tobacco is evil and “medical” marijuana is good.
Bottom line: reefer makes you stupid and lazy, and it destroys your ambition.
Yup. This is all about blue state taxes on tobacco, nothing else.
“Science based”?! What a joke!
The fascism is here.
So much for that whole “illegal to seize private property without fair recompense” eh? :)
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