Tobacco Bill Gives FDA New Power

Heading to Obama's Desk: Historic Bill Giving FDA Authority to Regulate Tobacco

By Z. BYRON WOLF and KATE BARRETT
Abc News

A tobacco bill nearly a decade in the making is heading to President Barack Obama's desk after clearing its final hurdle today on Capitol Hill.

The House passed a measure to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco, confirming the Senate's decision Thursday.

Moments after the House voted 307-97 to pass the bill, Obama expressed his support for the measure. It's a departure from President Bush, who suggested he would veto legislation to give the FDA authority over tobacco.

"After a decade of opposition, all of us are finally about to achieve the victory with this bill, a bill that truly defines change in Washington," Obama said in the Rose Garden.

Times have changed now that even tobacco states have smoking bans.

The bill gives the FDA authority to regulate tobacco in the same way the government regulates everything else Americans put in their bodies -- from Froot Loops to aspirin.

At Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, organization president Matthew L. Myers called the vote "a truly historic victory" and "the strongest action Congress has ever taken to reduce tobacco use."

"Forty-five years after the first U.S. Surgeon General's report linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer, the most deadly product sold in America will no longer be the least-regulated product sold in America," Myers said in a statement. Read more...