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The law taking effect this summer does not bar companies from making light cigarettes, only from using words like “light” in marketing. The industry says that it is complying and that it should be free to use colors on its packages to market different product lines to adult consumers. “Colors are really used to identify and differentiate different brand packs,” David M. Sylvia, a spokesman for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, said Thursday.
“We do not use colors to communicate whether one product is less harmful or more harmful than another.” In a letter to the F.D.A. on Thursday,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], James E. Dillard III, a senior vice president of Altria, said banning certain colors would be unconstitutional under commercial speech and property protections. The tobacco regulation passed last year gave the F.D.A. sweeping new regulatory authority over tobacco. One new requirement is that companies must prove to the F.D.A. that a product is safer than conventional cigarettes before it can be marketed as such.
While Congress specifically banned some terms, including “low” and “mild” ? present on about half the packages of cigarettes sold in the United States ? it also gave the F.D.A. authority to act against “similar descriptors” that could mislead consumers to think certain products were less risky. Last month, the agency published a notice that it could take action against colors like silver or pastels, as well as additional words like “silver,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],” “smooth” and “natural,” which some companies are still planning to use on cigarette packages.
The notice sought public and industry comments, which are due Friday. Kathleen Quinn,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a spokeswoman for the new F.D.A. Center for Tobacco Products, said Thursday that the agency would “thoroughly review” the use of color on cigarette packages by June 22, the effective date of the wording ban and the first anniversary of the law’s passage. Half of the U.S. population lives in areas where smoking is banned in workplaces, bars and restaurants. More than 70% of Americans don’t allow smoking in their homes, including about 50% of current smokers. Taxes have pushed the cost of smoking ever higher ($10 per pack in New York City) and the social costs?in disgusted looks and lectures from friends and family members?have escalated too.
Such inconveniences are forcing a sea change in smoking habits and upending traditional approaches to smoking cessation. For one thing, there’s a growing group of intermittent and secret smokers who seem to smoke as much for psychological and emotional reasons as nicotine addiction. In addition to breaking the physical addiction, smokers who want to quit today need to understand why, when and where they smoke, and challenge some of the thinking that goes along with it, cessation experts say. " ‘Sneaking one in’ has become a smoker’s pastime and avocation,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," says Timothy Stephens,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a 40-year-old Manhattan lawyer who started smoking cigarettes in high school.
Nowadays, with a wife and baby,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], he doesn’t smoke at home. He takes five-minute smoking breaks outside his office building (“four minutes if it’s cold”) and he drives to work from the suburbs instead of using public transit so he can get more smoking in.