NAGPUR: It took many years to act for the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) to implement the ban imposed on smoking at public places as the authorities here caught 19 persons on Tuesday. The FDA also penalised six kiosk owners for selling tobacco-related products near restricted areas. The ban was imposed under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and D ... Jump to full article >>

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)– Major tobacco makers urged a federal advisory panel against banning menthol cigarettes, arguing such a ban would likely create an unregulated black market. The Food and Drug Administration was given the authority to regulate tobacco products in 2009. As part of the tobacco law, all tobacco flavorings except for menthol were banned on concerns the flavors enticed children and adolescents to start smoking. [caption id ... Jump to full article >>

WASHINGTON — By late March, manufacturers of most tobacco products must begin giving the Food and Drug Administration information on new additives and other alterations in their products — enabling the agency for the first time to weed out chemical or manufacturing tweaks that make cigarettes and other products more addictive or otherwise more harmful. The FDA was directed to collect ingredient information by the 2009 Tobacco Control Act an ... Jump to full article >>

By late March, tobacco companies will have to reveal to the Food and Drug Administration what sorts of new additives they’ve recently put in their products. But the ruling doesn’t apply to electronic cigarettes, whose makers are locked in legal battle with the FDA. Meanwhile, the e-cigs are starting to gain a pop-culture foothold – in the fall film “The Tourist,” actor Johnny Depp extols the devices’ virtues to Angelina Joli ... Jump to full article >>

Tobacco companies led by Altria Group Inc. and Reynolds American Inc. must get U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to sell products introduced or changed in the past four years, a move that may let the agency keep more addictive items off the market. Products that weren’t commercially available on Feb. 15, 2007, must be submitted for review, the FDA said yesterday in a statement. Items that aren’t “substantially equivalent” to tho ... Jump to full article >>

Lorillard Inc., maker of the U.S.’s leading menthol cigarette brand, is engaged in a fierce battle to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from banning a product that accounts for roughly 90% of its sales. Among the company’s tactics: buying up a host of menthol-bashing Internet domain names, including MentholKillsMinorities.com, MentholAddictsYouth.com and FDAMustBanMenthol.com. Keeping those names out of the hands of critics is ... Jump to full article >>

A small, Virginia-based tobacco company said Tuesday that it will seek the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval to sell a new moist snuff tobacco as a “modified-risk” product with fewer cancer-causing agents. If its application is approved, Henrico County-based Star Scientific Inc. could be the first company to win an FDA designation of a tobacco product as potentially less hazardous to health. “I think (the toba ... Jump to full article >>

Want to quit smoking? Many opt to light up electronic cigarettes, known as e-cigarettes, which release a vaporized dose of liquid nicotine without smoke or tobacco. But the battery-operated products have ignited a hot debate in the US over whether or not they are safe and should be pulled from the shelves. E-cigarettes have been hit hard in recent months due to negative reports regarding their safety, but a December 16th press announcement buck ... Jump to full article >>

Washington state has had a law banning pipes, cigarettes and cigars in public places since 2006. Now, King County would like to expand that ban to include electronic cigarettes, the Seattle Post Intelligencer reports. Even though proponents of e-cigs point out that the devices only emit a smoke-free mist, public health officials worry that e-cigarettes look too much like the real tobacco products and could make it harder to enforce the current ... Jump to full article >>

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally wants to change the way cigarette packs look. It’s not seeking to change the color of the packs or the size and shape of cigarettes. It finally wants to change the content and position of the health warnings. And, it’s about time they did. More than forty years after the first warnings were placed on the side of packs, the first serious changes to the warnings are being proposed by the FDA. In a ... Jump to full article >>