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also reported that he was in favor of bills in 2012 and
2013 which would have exempted large, hand-rolled pre-
mium cigars from FDA regulation and user fees. The re-
port concluded that if named into position, Price is likely
to take his anti-Obamacare deregulatory fervor into FDA
tobacco regulations as the HHS cabinet member that
oversees FDA.
Industry
Urgency
Referencing Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp,”
Americans for Tax Reform filed a petition in mid-De-
cember urging him to deliver a familiar message to Sur-
geon General Vivek Murthy: “You’re fired!”
The group suggested that Murthy be replaced by a se-
nior public health official “who actually cares about to-
bacco harm reduction and saving lives.” Americans for
Tax Reform further emphasized that the growing body
of evidence suggests that vapor products are less harmful
than cigarettes and could “save millions of smokers’ lives,
billions of tax dollars, and represent the greatest advance-
ment in public health in generations.”
Also around press time, Republican lawmakers sent a
letter to Vice President-elect Mike Pence to repeal e-va-
por deeming rules set by FDA in August 2016. U.S. Sen-
ator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chairman of the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Commit-
tee, and Duncan Hunter of California urged the new
administration to “protect thousands of small-business
owners, employees and consumers from the FDA’s over-
reach” by repealing or suspending FDA’s “burdensome”
deeming regulation over e-vapor products.
R Street Institute sent a similar letter to Vice Presi-
dent-elect Pence, endorsing the prompt rollback of the
August 2016 deeming regulations for electronic vapor
products, noting that the Institute shares many of the
concerns of the two lawmakers in the letter mentioned
above. R Street also encouraged the new administration
to consider ways to improve the regulatory framework for
e-vapor products to allow the industry to compete in the
U.S. marketplace, while also looking at the issue from a
perspective that includes due consideration of the public
health impact.
Boston University School of Public Health Professor
Michael Siegel also called on the administration to sup-
port e-vapor and the thousands of small businesses that
are likely to close their doors due to FDA’s deeming regu-
lations. He said that the Trump presidency has a “historic
opportunity” to adopt a “sensible regulatory strategy,”
and to “undo the damage that the FDA’s vaping products
policy has done.”
Does Siegel believe these efforts will have some effect
on Trump? “One might argue that it is unlikely that an
administration would completely repeal an agency reg-
ulation that is already in force,” Siegel said in his online
tobacco blog this November. “However, President-elect
Trump does not seem timid about threatening to com-
pletely repeal other health statutes and regulations, so I
don’t see any reason why he would be reluctant to do that
with the FDA’s ill-advised e-cigarette regulations.”
Beyond the e-vapor world, the cigar industry has hope
for its lawsuit against FDA, filed by the Cigar Associa-
tion of America, the International Premium Cigar and
Pipe Retailers Association, and Cigar Rights of America,
which, among other things, states that FDA’s deeming rules
that subject premium cigars to the same regulatory regime
as other tobacco products is “arbitrary” and “capricious”
and violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). That
suit is set to begin at the end of July 2017.
TBI
Generally
speaking, the
hopefuls point
out that Trump
is, ultimately, a
business man,
and expect
that he will
get behind the
mom-and-pop
retailers and
manufacturers
that exist in
the sector.
[ T O B A C C O B U S I N E S S . C O M ]
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