The fight for premium cigar exemption is still being fought on Capitol Hill. This past week Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson sent a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the man that leads it, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, pushing for exemption of premium cigars from the agency’s potentially damaging deeming rules. The senators expressed their concerns regarding the agency’s regulations and the damages they could cause for the cigar industry, especially within the state of Florida.
This bi-partisan effort between Republican Rubio and Democrat Nelson echoes the concerns and recent arguments made by various cigar trade groups and businesses that regulations would be damaging to the vitality of the industry and that since many of the regulations are based on the notion that minors are smoking premium cigars–which has been disputed often–that regulations are unnecessary and overreaching.
In the letter, the senators draw attention to Florida’s cigar businesses like J.C. Newman Cigar Co., which launched its own grassroots campaign months ago called ‘Saved Cigar City’ [read more here].
