Former FDA Chief On Tobacco Reform

(CBS)  David Kessler was head of the food and drug administration from 1990-1997. CBS News anchor Katie Couric sat down with Dr. Kessler to discuss the anti-smoking bill.

Q: Dr. Kessler, how historic do you think this legislation is?

A: It is very historic, Katie. It's a landmark piece of legislation. For the first time, we have the opportunity to regulate this deadly, addictive product.

Q: The nation's biggest cigarette maker, Phillip Morris, supports this bill. That seems a bit counter-intuitive. What does Phillip Morris have to gain by this?

A: I was a little nervous. Here we worked for 15 years for this legislation - they fought us all along the way. They fought us very hard. And then they switched. Then they backed the legislation. I think they understood that the 50 years that they deceived the American public, they deny the addictiveness of the product - that just was not going to work.

Q: Are you disappointed this legislation does not allow the F.D.A. to remove nicotine in cigarettes or deal with mentholated cigarettes, which are so popular?

A: It gives the agency a broad range of authority over the product it sells, over the advertising and promotion. No piece of legislation is perfect. But this is as close as I could have ever imagined or hoped for.

Q: The F.D.A., though, as you know, Dr. Kessler, has had some recent blunders - for example, the drug Vioxx. It was approved and removed for safety reasons. I guess the question is: Is the F.D.A. up to the task of this new regulation?

A: You're right, the last number of years have been hard on the F.D.A., but I think this is a shot in the arm. I think this will help the agency, you know, be the most important consumer protection agency that it's been for the last 100 years. This will save lives, Katie.

To watch an extended version of the interview, click below:

[mypatch]

Excuse me, but,
Cigar Smoking

Cigars -- still tobacco, still dangerous to your health

Many people view cigar smoking as more sophisticated and less dangerous than cigarette smoking. Yet one large cigar can contain as much tobacco as an entire pack of cigarettes. The secondhand smoke it gives off, which others breathe in, can fill a room for hours.

Here we will describe what cigars are, the recent trends in their use, and the possible health effects they may have on the people who smoke them and those around them.

How are cigars different from cigarettes?

A cigar is defined, for tax purposes, as "any roll of tobacco wrapped in leaf tobacco or in any substance containing tobacco," while a cigarette is "any roll of tobacco wrapped in paper or any substance not containing tobacco." Unlike most machine-made cigarettes, cigars do not usually have a filter.

Most cigars are made up of a single type of air-cured or dried tobacco. Cigar tobacco leaves are first aged for about a year and then fermented in a multi-step process that can take from 3 to 5 months. Fermentation causes chemical and bacterial reactions that change the tobacco. This is what gives cigars a different taste and smell from cigarettes.

Cigars come in many sizes, some as small as a cigarette (called a cigarillo), others much larger. Large cigars may contain between 5 and 17 grams of tobacco. There are about 29 grams in an ounce, so a very large cigar can contain more than half an ounce of tobacco. This is as much tobacco as a whole pack of cigarettes. Large cigars can take between 1 to 2 hours to smoke.

To blur the line between cigars and cigarettes, there are now cigarillos ("little cigars") that are the same size and shape of cigarettes. Many have filters. Other than the fact that they are brown, they look just like cigarettes, though some are just a bit larger. Studies suggest that many people treat them like cigarettes -- inhaling and smoking them every day.

[hifihifi-2009]

Hold on. There is no evidence that CIGAR smoking is harmful. To clearly present actual research findings, please be accurate and use "cigarette" instead of "tobacco products" and "cigarette smoking" instead of "smoking" in these kinds of articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigar#Health_effects