Study Urges Regulating Tobacco as Drug

In the latest in a series of reports highlighting the adverse health effects of cigarette smoking, a presidentially appointed advisory panel recommended Wednesday that tobacco be classified and regulated as a drug and that smoking be forbidden in all public areas, including the workplace, schools and on all airlines and other public transportation.

“Eradication of tobacco use is essential and would have measurable results in reducing cancer mortality,” said the National Cancer Advisory Board in a report prepared for the federal government’s National Cancer Institute. The board, which conducted five public hearings in cities across the nation, including Los Angeles, said that “the importance of eliminating smoking and other tobacco use was the most frequently repeated theme among a cross-section of witnesses.”

Urges Involvement of Citizens

Dr. Samuel Broder, director of the National Cancer Institute, said in an interview that the board’s proposals should “be seriously looked at” by policy-makers, although he said that he believes all Americans have “to get into the act and recognize they have responsibility for their own health.”

He added: “Among the most significant things that people can do is to stop smoking.”

Broder said he believes that “a lot of people have very strong feelings about the health consequences of smoking” and that he sensed a “definite” movement of “people coming to terms with it.”

Helene G. Brown, a member of the board--which was created by the National Cancer Act of 1971 to advise the director of the institute and other federal health officials--called regulation of tobacco by the Food and Drug Administration “priority No. 1” and said that if tobacco were treated as a drug, “you would only be able to use tobacco . . . in your own home” or where it was specifically permitted.

Walker Merryman, vice president of the Tobacco Institute, which represents the tobacco industry, called the board’s recommendations “more of the same,” saying: “I don’t see anything new or different in them. It seems to me that their wish for FDA control would be in the speculative hope that the FDA would then be forced to ban the product. I think they are just off on another neo-prohibitionist tier.”

Act Rules Out Tobacco Regulation

The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 specifically excludes tobacco and alcohol from FDA regulation, and it presumably would take congressional action to give the agency new authority. Currently, the FDA can only regulate tobacco products if a health claim is made.

An FDA source said Wednesday, however, that he believes Congress “might not necessarily be opposed” to giving the agency regulatory power over tobacco, although “we don’t really have any niche right now that we could put it (tobacco) in, and it is unrealistic to think that we would take it off the market.”

Many of the other panel recommendations already have been implemented to some degree across the country.