From TruthDig
By Marie Cocco

Congress is known for leaving business unfinished, but rarely is a task left undone for more than four decades.

The tobacco industry is a prolific donor of campaign funds and a lobbying titan. So the federal government has left it mostly alone since the 1964 surgeon general’s report declared that cigarette smoking causes disease and death.

“This is the only consumer product that, when used as intended, kills people,” says Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “And it is unregulated.”

Until, one can hope, right now.

Before departing for its August break, the House of Representatives passed the first-ever comprehensive tobacco regulation bill. It gives the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco by, among other things, cracking down on marketing to children, mandating dramatically stronger health warnings on every pack, and requiring that the warnings be larger than they are now. Most significantly, the government would ban use of words such as light and mild that are meant to fool smokers into thinking there is such a thing as a safe, or safer, cigarette. It would prohibit sweet flavorings now used to make smoking seem palatable, though it wouldn’t go far enough in reducing the use of menthol flavors, favored among African-American smokers.

And for the first time, tobacco companies would have to disclose to the government just what is in cigarettes. Right now, Myers says, there are more than 60 known cancer-causing agents in cigarettes, but most information on them is held privately by the industry. “The FDA doesn’t even know what is in there,” he says. The legislation, Myers believes, “takes the decisions about what might be in cigarettes away from the tobacco industry … and turns them over to the scientists.”

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