FDA gets into growing, marketing tobacco

Thursday's vote to allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco is a watershed event, even though it has been a long time coming. Although the lopsided 79-17 vote in the Senate to let the FDA decide how cigarettes are made and marketed indicates a widespread distaste for smoking, the benefits of this seismic shift may not materialize, and the economic cataclysm critics have predicted could.

I'm not a smoker and don't like to be around people who are smoking. I own no tobacco stocks, and I don't subscribe to the theory that people have a "right to smoke" when that "right" disturbs the rights of others to smoke-free air. That said, I fear that FDA regulation of tobacco might be ill-advised. Sens. Richard Burr and Kay Hagan of North Carolina proposed an alternative — creating a separate federal office to regulate tobacco. The FDA, they said, is already overburdened and not entirely successful in trying to assure the safety of food and medicine. They have a point.

Perhaps of greater concern is what FDA regulation will do to tobacco consumption. Supporters say it will reduce smoking. But if the FDA cuts the nicotine in cigarettes, smokers who are addicted to nicotine will smoke more, not less, to get their nicotine fix. Some have predicted a black market will develop for old-style cigarettes with plenty of nicotine, and organized crime will benefit from the nicotine prohibition.

Tobacco growers fear that the FDA will ban the farm chemicals they use to keep their tobacco free of insects and other pests and to ensure a hardy, productive crop. Fields around Wilson are turning green with newly planted tobacco, which will stand four or five feet tall with broad, bright green leaves in a couple of months. Tobacco is sensitive to a variety of diseases and pests. Without proven and long-used farm chemicals, those wide green fields of healthy tobacco could be yellow or brown. The new legislation could get the FDA into the farming business, with disastrous effects on the income of farmers who have invested millions of dollars in specialized tobacco planting, harvesting and curing equipment.

The legislation also increases taxes on the most-heavily taxed commodity in America. States facing budget deficits are likely to increase their own cigarette taxes. At some point, if it hasn't already, taxation of tobacco will reach a tipping point. Cigarettes will become so expensive that sales will fall to the point that tax revenue, despite higher rates, will decline. Reducing cigarette sales is one of the aims of the legislation, but achieving that goal will deny state, federal and local taxing authorities the revenues they want.

Let's face it, even without FDA regulation, cigarette smoking is in rapid decline in this country. Once as common as sweet tea at a church social, cigarettes are now banned from most indoor gatherings. Office workers are forced outside to feed their habits. Cars are no longer equipped with cigarette lighters and ash trays. Ash trays have disappeared from homes and offices. Even North Carolina, which grows more tobacco than any other state, will ban smoking in all restaurants. Those who persist in the "nasty habit" must do so furtively, almost shamefully. Smoking is withering away. FDA regulation might speed up its disappearance from polite society, but the once-stylish habit is on its way out anyway. Federal regulation amounts to kicking a dying horse.