Advocacy Action Alert! Tell the White House the FDA should regulate all tobacco products

On Tuesday, October 27, ASAM is joining the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids for a National Call-In Day to tell President Obama to give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, cigars and hookah.

Currently FDA regulates cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco. It has proposed extending its authority to cover additional products that meet the definition of a tobacco product under the proposed rule: Tobacco Products Deemed To Be Subject to the Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act (Deeming). Proposed newly “deemed” products would include electronic cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, certain dissolvables that are not “smokeless tobacco,” gels, and waterpipe tobacco. It's been more than a year since FDA issued the draft Deeming r​ule, but it has yet to finalize it.

Add your voice to the advocacy effort by calling the White House at 202-456-1111 on Tuesday, October 27 and use the talking points below to push for a final rule!

Talking Points

• I’m calling today to ask President Obama to finalize regulations to give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to protect our kids and the public health from e-cigarettes, cigars and hookah.  
• Over 2 million kids are now using e-cigarettes, 1.4 million kids are smoking cigars and 1.6 million smoke hookah.  There is NO federal oversight of these products and the companies are using candy and fruit-flavored products to target kids.  It is past time to close the e-cigarette and cigar loophole. 
• Please feel free to share a brief personal story on why this is important to you.  It might be that you don’t want your kids to use tobacco products, that you are or were a smoker, or you just want to protect our nation’s health.  
• Thank you. I hope we can count on the President to protect our kids from all tobacco products.