These measures focus on reducing demand for cigarettes, but do not address the addictive aspects of tobacco or constrain manufacturers' incentives to attract more smokers. The committee expressed concern that overall smoking rates may not drop significantly below 15 percent and that youth smoking rates may not fall permanently below 20 percent unless the basic legal framework of the tobacco market is changed. Therefore, it proposed a second set of further-reaching recommendations. Specifically, the committee called for:

• Changing federal law to give FDA authority to regulate tobacco products, including powers to restrict how they can be marketed.
• Removing federal restrictions on state laws so that states are free to supplement federal regulations with more stringent measures to suppress smoking.
• Limiting tobacco advertising and promotional displays to text-only, black-and-white formats.
• Prohibiting tobacco companies from using misleading terms such as "mild" and "light."
• Requiring new, large pictorial warnings on the harmful effects of smoking -- similar to those required in Canada -- on all cigarette packs and cartons.
• Requiring manufacturers to correct false or misleading information on products and at the point of sale.
• Restricting the type or number of outlets that can sell tobacco products, and requiring them to display warnings and give a proportional amount of space to cessation aids.
• Prohibiting tobacco companies from targeting youth for any purpose and urging them to redirect money they now spend on prevention to independent public health organizations.
• Developing a plan for gradually reducing the allowable nicotine content of cigarettes.

Cigarettes are a unique consumer product in that they contain carcinogens and other dangerous toxins and would be banned under federal public health statutes if these statu
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Contact: Christine Stencel
news@nas.edu
202-334-2138
The National Academies
24-May-2007