FTC Orders Cigar Warning Labels

The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. surgeon general will require that cigar packages sold in the United States carry warning labels about the health risks associated with smoking them, a practice that has increased dramatically in recent years, federal officials said Monday.

The labels will go a step further than those on cigarette packages, issuing for the first time a warning from the government about the health risks of secondhand tobacco smoke.

FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky said that the wording of the labels is intended to convey the message that “cigar smoking is not a harmless alternative to cigarette smoking. The very fact that there have been these labels on cigarettes but not cigars may have been sending the wrong signal.”

The new black-and-white labels will be proportionately larger than those on cigarette packs. The labeling standards are part of a consent agreement between the FTC and the nation’s seven largest cigar manufacturers, whose products make up 95% of the U.S. cigar market.

At a news conference in Washington, Surgeon General David Satcher said that the warnings are an improvement over the “outdated” labels on domestically sold cigarette packages because they carry an express warning about risks associated with secondhand smoke. The warnings on cigarette packages have been required by Congress since 1966.

The consent agreement is based on a federal law mandating that products posing serious health risks bear warning labels. The cigar companies agreed to the requirements to settle FTC allegations that their “failure to disclose the health risks of cigars was deceptive and unfair,” Pitofsky said.

Under the agreement, cigar makers must affix one of five labels, each of which addresses a different health concern, to every package of cigars. The five labels will be printed in equal numbers and distributed on a rotating basis to “ensure that all consumers see each of the five,” the FTC explained.

After California passed a 1988 law requiring warning labels on all cigar packages sold in the state, most boxes of cigars sold domestically have carried the labels, said California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, who participated in the news conference via satellite.

The new federal labels supersede a California measure scheduled to take effect Sept. 1 that would have toughened the state’s warning requirements, said Dennis Eckhart, head of the tobacco litigation and enforcement section of the California attorney general’s office.

Responding to the increasing popularity of cigars, other states have moved recently to pass their own warning-label laws, raising the unwieldy prospect of “50 different labels in 50 different states,” said Norman F. Sharp, president of the Washington-based Cigar Assn. of America, a national trade group.

He welcomed the FTC labels, saying that they will bring “a uniform system of cigar warnings rather than leaving it helter-skelter to the states.”

Sales figures from the association show that cigar smoking has increased by more than 50% in the last decade, reversing an overall decline since 1950.

Sharp connected the fall and resurgence of cigar smoking to images commonly associated with the product. For years, Sharp said, cigars were considered an emblem of “bad guys--fat-cats and Mafia types.”

But during the economic boom of the 1990s, cigars “recaptured their traditional image,” he said. “Now, [the cigar] is a symbol of success, celebration and achievement. Cigar smokers tend to be older and more affluent.”

But anti-smoking advocates have grown alarmed by the increase, particularly among young people. A recent study by the Department of Health and Human Services found that one in five teenagers surveyed had smoked a cigar in the past month.

Jeff Bell, a sales representative with JR Cigars, a national retail chain, said that he does not think the new labels will affect sales. Customers who purchase them at his Washington shop “just decide they want to smoke and they’re going to smoke.”

Sharp mentioned a 1998 National Cancer Institute study that found up to 75% of cigar smokers are occasional smokers.

The study bears out his theory of cigars as accouterments of the leisure class, who consider them “one of life’s simple little pleasures,” Sharp said.

He attributed part of the sales growth in the last decade to experimentation by young professionals, which he characterized as a short-term phenomenon.

“It was kind of faddish,” Sharp said, adding that sales figures have declined in the last six months.

Fad or not, Satcher suggested, the HHS findings about young people and cigars provided some of the impetus for the new labels.

The consent agreement grew out of a recommendation by the FTC to Congress last July. The settlement will take effect in 30 days, after which the cigar companies will have 180 days to update their packaging.

The seven firms subject to the consent agreement are Swisher International Inc.; Consolidated Cigar Corp.; Havatampa Inc.; General Cigar Holdings Inc.; John Middleton Inc.; Lane Limited Inc.; and Swedish Match North America Inc.

Of the seven, only Lane Limited is a subsidiary of one of the “big tobacco” firms involved in the government’s lawsuit to recoup Medicare dollars spent on smoking-related illness. Lane Limited is owned by Brown & Williamson. Swisher and Middleton are independently owned. Consolidated, Havatampa and General Cigar are owned by foreign interests.