WASHINGTON - The Bush administration issued a decision today regarding Cigarettes that's winning praise from a New Jersey senator.
In 1966, the Federal Trade Commission allowed tobacco companies to advertise the tar and nicotine content of Cigarettes if the information was based on a type of method the FTC used to measure the level of the harmful substances.
The idea was to give smokers the information to help them make "informed decisions about the Cigarettes they smoked," the FTC said in a statement today.
But now, the FTC and scientists believe such information only confuses people and the test method is flawed.
FTC spokesman Frank Dorman said in an email interview the agency's decision to rescind the 42-year-old guidance doesn't mean companies can no longer make statements about tar and nicotine tests. However, ads carrying that information must not mislead people, he wrote. And if an ad is deemed misleading, the FTC can take legal action if doing so would serve the public interest, he said.
Critics have long argued that tobacco companies make it seem as though smoking Cigarettes with lower tar and nicotine content - "light" or "low-tar" varieties - is less harmful.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said he has pressured the FTC for years about scrapping the flawed measuring method. He and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, have introduced legislation to ban it. The New Jerseyan has long opposed the tobacco industry, and wrote the law that banned smoking on airplanes.
“Today’s action calls into question the ability of tobacco companies to continue marketing so-called ‘light’ and ‘low-tar’ Cigarettes,” Lautenberg said in a statement. “Tobacco companies can no longer rely on the government to back up a flawed testing method that tricks smokers into thinking these Cigarettes deliver less tar and nicotine."