Flavored cigars and cigarillos are the new target of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA.), hoping to better regulate the sales of the tobacco products.
According to the New York Times, Congress passed a law attempting to eliminate the sale of flavored cigarettes. However, the law did no prevent the sale of flavored cigars, leaving the FDA to decide how they will handle their regulation.
"The FDA is now wrestling with how to exercise its authority over an array of other tobacco products," the Times reports. "In recent weeks, for example, it sent warning letters to several companies that it says are disguising roll-your-own tobacco as pipe tobacco, a practice that industry analysts say has become a common way to avoid federal taxes and FDA regulation."
There are many cheap flavored cigars and cigarillos sold at convenience stores and gas stations. With no word on how the FDA will regulate the products, those who oppose smoking tobacco products believe their lack of progress is harmful to their cause of reducing the amount of youth smokers, according to the Times.
"The 20th century was the cigarette century, and we worked very hard to address that," Gregory N. Connolly, the director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard School of Public Health, told the Times. "Now the 21st century is about multiple tobacco products. They're cheap. They're flavored. And some of them you can use anywhere."
Mitchell Zeller, 55, the director of the F.D.A.'s Center for Tobacco Products told the Times the rise of new tobacco products means the government agency needs to take action. She is aware of the criticisms the agency has received about the issue, and they are taking a careful approach on the matter.
"What we've seen in the past 10 years is this remarkable transformation of the marketplace," Mr. Zeller said. "There are products being sold today - unregulated products - that literally did not exist 10 years ago."
