Senate OKs Buyout for Tobacco Growers, Cigarette Regulation
WASHINGTON — The Senate approved a measure Thursday that would combine a $12-billion buyout for tobacco growers with authority for the government for the first time to regulate the ingredients of all tobacco products, including nicotine levels.
The buyout would end a Depression-era quota and price support system for tobacco growers, which even tobacco farmers complain inflates their costs and makes it impossible to compete with foreign-grown tobacco.
Hundreds of tobacco growers would receive more than $1 million, according to the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization. Growers could continue to plant and harvest tobacco but without the quota system and price support system.
The Food and Drug Administration would gain broad powers to regulate the manufacture, distribution, sale and advertising of all tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars, pipe and chewing tobacco. The bill would require that the health warnings on those products be more prominent, covering at least 30% of each cigarette pack. It would restrict tobacco marketing, particularly in youth-oriented magazines.
The two-part measure was adopted, 78 to 15, as an amendment to a wide-ranging corporate tax bill, which passed the Senate two months ago. The House has also attached a $9.6-billion tobacco buyout -- without additional FDA regulation -- to the corporate tax measure. Before the bill can go to the White House, a single compromise version will have to be reached
Supporters of each part of the legislation in the Senate conceded that they could not have gained passage for their measure without the other.
"The unlikely coalition of tobacco growers and public health experts is what has given this effort momentum," said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, an advocacy group.
The FDA measure was sponsored by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) but was supported largely by Democrats. The buyout for tobacco farmers found most of its support among senators from tobacco-growing states such as Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia.
In the Senate legislation, the tobacco industry would pay for the buyout. Under the original House approach, taxpayers would pay for it.
But House legislators, responding to outrage over the plan to have taxpayers foot the bill, voted Tuesday to prevent the Agriculture Department from using its budget to implement the buyout.
