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Widespread attention continues to be focused on the FDA’s announced plan to regulate additional tobacco products, possibly including cigars. With state legislatures beginning their 2013 sessions, many are signaling how they are planning to take matters into their own hands. In Hawaii, a bill designed to “curtail tobacco use among adolescents and young adults by raising tobacco taxes, while not placing the local premium cigar industry at a competitive disadvantage,” and regulating “characterizing flavors,” is in the pipeline.

Twas four nights before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except staffers at the White House. That’s right, at 3 p.m. on Friday, December 21, 2012, the last business day before Christmas, the White House finally released its Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan, which included coal in the stocking in the form of more regulations for tobacco companies.

Several tobacco product manufacturers and a retailer recently requested that the United States Supreme Court consider their challenge to FDA’s requirement for graphic warning labels on cigarette packages.  The tobacco companies are requesting that the Supreme Court reverse the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision finding that the warning label requirement does not violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Cigar manufacturer Prime Time International has responded to U.S. Representative Henry Waxman’s request that FDA immediately regulate cigars and other tobacco products.  (We previously reported on Representative Waxman’s August 27, 2012 request here.)  Prime Time International’s response, a copy of which can be found here, makes a compelling case for delaying FDA regulation of cigars pending further study. 

Earlier this year, Altria Group Inc. (the parent company of cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris USA) announced that it had purchased for $10 million the naming rights for Richmond’s Landmark Theater.  Some industry observers wondered how this was possible, when regulations promulgated by the Food & Drug Administration pursuant to the Tobacco Control Act generally prohibit cigarette and smokeless tobacco manufacturers from sponsoring athletic, musical, artistic, or other social or cultural events. 

FDA recently announced a program under which it will undertake voluntary visits of facilities involved in manufacturing and testing tobacco products.  The program is intended to give FDA an opportunity to learn more about the manufacturing practices that are unique to the tobacco industry by observing manufacturing operations, from the…