Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act of 2019

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CASTOR of Florida. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2339, the Protecting American Lungs and Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act of 2019 and the efforts by the House to curb the youth e- cigarette and vaping epidemic.

Congress must take strong action to stop the marketing of tobacco products to children and end the e-cigarette epidemic among our youth. In 2009, Congress passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Tobacco Control Act), which provided the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with authority to regulate certain tobacco products marketed towards children. And today, the House is passing the Protecting American Lungs and Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act introduced by Representatives Pallone and Shalala, which will strengthen the FDA's authority to regulate tobacco products marketed towards children, particularly the insidious e-cigarettes that have swept the country in the decade since we passed the Tobacco Control Act. The legislative intent is rooted in the important objective of preventing youth access to tobacco products and stopping big tobacco and others from preying on our children by developing a new generation of nicotine-addicted smokers.

For years, many of my colleagues and I have worked with FDA and stakeholders to ensure that traditional, handcrafted premium cigars that are not used by or marketed to children are not swept up in an overbroad regulation. We introduced bipartisan legislation this Congress, as we have in last four Congresses, that reinforces the legislative intent of the Tobacco Control Act and narrowly defines traditional non-flavored handcrafted premium cigars not marketed to children. Our bill currently has 78 bipartisan cosponsors, and last Congress, our legislation H.R. 564 had 149 bipartisan cosponsors.

I would like to thank Chairman Pallone for working with me and others to address what I believe could have been unintended consequences of H.R. 2339 of subjecting traditional large and premium cigars not marketed to children to overbroad regulation. The bill as amended in the Energy and Commerce Committee correctly exempts from certain regulations this small subset of traditional, handcrafted cigars that are not marketed to children. The FDA would continue to have the authority to subject traditional and large premium cigars to important FDA regulations like minimum age requirements; prohibition of adulterated and misbranded products; requirements to register and report products and ingredients; FDA inspections every two years; good manufacturing practices and tobacco product standards; user fees; and the FDA should have enforcement powers for these.

While it was appropriate to provide exemption from certain provisions for traditional large and premium cigars in the bill, the definition of traditional large and premium cigars contained in H.R. 2339 should be updated to conform with the definition in H.R. 1854, to wit:

A traditional large and premium cigar should be defined as any roll of tobacco that is wrapped in 100 percent leaf tobacco, bunched with 100 percent tobacco filler, contains no filter, tip, flavor additive, or non-tobacco mouthpiece, and weighs at least 6 pounds per 1,000 count. It also must either have a 100 percent leaf tobacco binder and be handrolled, or have a homogenized tobacco leaf binder and be made in the United States using human hands to lay the 100 percent leaf tobacco wrapper onto only one machine that bunches, wraps, and caps each individual cigar. And, it should explicitly exclude cigarettes or little cigars, as defined by the FDA.

The above definition is essentially the definition from H.R. 2339 but without the single cigar retail price provision. The price point included in the bill has no rational basis for inclusion and a cigar made consistent with the definition above meets the test of the type of cigar not consumed by our youth. Had I had the opportunity to offer an amendment, I would have proposed striking this arbitrary provision from the legislation to ensure that the family cigar producers in my district, across Florida and small business owners across the country including the many mom and pop retail shops are not subjected to this unnecessary job-killing arbitrary price that lacks a rational basis.

I look forward to continuing to work with the Senate, the FDA and to press my own bill in the House, H.R. 1854, to ensure that any laws or regulations that deal with traditional large and premium cigars are consistent with our shared goals of preventing youth tobacco use, stopping arbitrary or unintended regulation and protecting American jobs.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source