Anti-smoking advocates bemoan 'faltering' pace of FDA action

WASHINGTON — It seemed like a new era in the half-century battle against the deadly toll of tobacco: U.S. health officials for the first time would begin regulating cigarettes, chew and other products responsible for a half-million American deaths annually.

“The decades-long effort to protect our children from the harmful effects of smoking has finally emerged victorious,” then President Barack Obama said in a speech before signing the 2009 measure into law.

But a decade later, health advocates say the Food and Drug Administration has yet to put in place the most sweeping changes envisioned by Congress. Efforts to bolster cigarette warnings and ban harmful ingredients have been stymied by tobacco companies. And the pace of progress is so slow that the FDA now faces lawsuits from its traditional allies: anti-smoking groups who are suing the agency to take action.

“If you’re not moving forward on your own with a clear goal in mind then, at some point, this is what happens,” said Eric Lindblom, a lawyer at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute who previously worked at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.

Ten years after the center’s launch, Lindblom and others say they underestimated the obstacles that would crowd FDA’s path, including industry lawsuits, lobbying and the grinding pace of government bureaucracy.

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