The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday banned the sales of four brands of cigarettes manufactured by R.J. Reynolds: Camel Crush Bold, Pall Mall Deep Set Recessed Filter, Pall Mall Deep Set Recessed Filter Menthol and Vantage Tech 13.
These four cigarette brands are being pulled from the market because they "did not meet requirements set forth in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act," the FDA said in a press release. The agency further said that these products were "not substantially equivalent" to and had "different characteristics" than products sold by the company before Feb. 15, 2007.
"These decisions were based on a rigorous, science-based review designed to protect the public from the harms caused by tobacco use," Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, said in the press release.
According to a federal law enacted in 2009, tobacco products manufactured and marketed after Feb. 15, 2007 need an FDA approval stating that they are "substantially equivalent" to predicate products, which refer to products marketed before the said date. This means that tobacco companies cannot introduce products containing new substances than those previously approved by the agency, according to The New York Times.
The same law grants the FDA the right to ban tobacco products that pose greater health risks than predicate products.
The four cigarette brands whose sales have been banned by the FDA were found to have additional substances not present in predicate products. Furthermore, the company has failed to prove that these four products do not pose greater health risks compared to predicate products.
"The scientific basis for these four decisions include a failure to demonstrate that increased yields of harmful or potentially harmful constituents, higher levels of menthol, and/or the addition of new ingredients in the currently marketed products - when compared to the predicate products - do not raise different questions of public health," the FDA said.
Retailers are given 30 days to pull these products out of their stores. The shares of Reynolds American, Inc. went down by 1.04 percent at $41.54 following the FDA ban.
The company has not commented on the issue, according to USA Today.
