On the twelfth of June, United State’s congress passed one of the toughest anti-tobacco bills in history. The acclaimed crusaders who had long waged war against ‘Big Tobacco’ have united in triumph, with Senator Edward Kennedy  hailing the bill as proof that ‘miracles still happen’ in Washington, DC.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act gives the Food and Drug Administration power to regulate both tobacco products and marketing efforts. Health advocates have long complained that the FDA has oversight over products such as lipstick, but never cigarettes, infamously responsible for approximately half a million domestic deaths a year. 

Advertising has perhaps been the most lethal blow to the industry.

The new legislation requires disclosure of all product ingredients and placement of even more prominently-displayed warning labels on packages. The FDA will also have the right to review all new tobacco products before they go to market and to ban companies from advertising any of its products as healthier alternatives by describing them as ‘lite’ or ‘mild’.

The bill specifically aims to focus on deterring young people from cigarette use. It will outlaw flavoured tobacco (except for menthol), which many claim lures children, and bar tobacco advertisements from appearing near schools. 

This law adds more pain to the tobacco industry which recently saw a federal tax on cigarettes nearly triple earlier this year and the imposition of many new state-level bans on smoking in public places. Now the tobacco industry must finance the government’s new regulatory activities by paying fees according to each company’s share of the market. The total cost of the FDA’s tobacco regulations will begin at $85 million a year and rise to $700 million in ten years. 

The war is not yet over. Tobacco companies are expected  to go to court, contesting these advertising restrictions as an infringement of the constitutional right to free speech. One has to wonder how this will correlate internationally, but it does indeed serve as a severe precedent for growth of that industry in the US.