Americas

US – federal: The House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability has announced that it is investigating the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). Republican committee chairman James Comer has written to FDA commissioner Robert Califf, accusing the CTP of failing to effectively define and administer its tobacco and nicotine regulatory programmes, “[fostering] uncertainty in the marketplace and [allowing] unsafe and unregulated products to proliferate”.  “A recent evaluation of CTP by the Reagan-Udall Foundation (RUF) found that CTP has not clearly set out the most basic elements of its tobacco and nicotine regulatory programs,” Comer said. He is requesting documents, communications, and a staff-level briefing related to the CTP’s activities.

Argentina: A Health Ministry decree came into force yesterday, banning the importation, distribution, sale and advertising of heated tobacco devices and consumables. An official ministry statement said that although heated tobacco products were promoted as low-risk products, “so far no independent study has shown that they are harmless to health. On the contrary, some investigations have verified that they contain many of the toxic substances that common cigarettes have, in some cases in a higher degree of concentration.”

Brazil: The director of the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa), Antonio Barra Torres, has told media that a resolution of the legal status of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco will probably be reached this year, possibly by the end of June. He said he did not want to anticipate whether that would involve prohibition or authorisation of the products because of the impact it would have on the market.

US - federal: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a new webpage listing all the tobacco products-related citizen petitions received by the agency’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). A citizen petition is a way for individuals, regulated industry representatives, or consumer groups to petition the FDA to issue, amend, or revoke a regulation, or to take other administrative action.

US - California: A US federal judge has granted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by RJ Reynold and other tobacco companies against California’s statewide ban on the sale of flavoured tobacco and vaping products. Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo said: “SB 793 does not control the retail sales of these products in other states, nor does it control the ability of manufacturers in or outside of California to continue manufacturing flavored tobacco products. In fact, manufacturers are still permitted to manufacture flavored tobacco products in California.” Reynolds and others brought the suit after California’s voters approved the ban in a November referendum. They claimed the law violated both the federal Tobacco Control Act (TCA) and the commerce clause in the US Constitution.

US - Nevada: Assembly Bill 294 has passed its first reading and been referred to the Committee on Health and Human Services. It would ban the sale of tobacco products and e-cigarettes with any flavour other than tobacco. It would also ban cigarette sales to anyone born after 31st December 2002; and bar the Nevada Department of Taxation from issuing a licence to any vending machine operator, manufacturer or wholesale dealer in cigarettes after 31st December 2028. It is unclear if these last measures would apply to heated tobacco products or e-cigarettes, since there is no definition of “cigarette” in the bill.