WASHINGTON - The Senate struck a historic blow against smoking in the United States yesterday, voting overwhelmingly to give regulators new power to limit nicotine in the cigarettes that kill nearly a half-million Americans a year, to drastically curtail ads that glorify tobacco, and to ban flavored products aimed at spreading the habit to young people.
President Obama said he was eager to sign the legislation. The House passed a slightly different version in April, but planned a vote for today to accept the Senate bill, sending it to Obama's desk. Cigarette foes said the measure would not only reduce deaths, but cut the $100 billion in annual healthcare costs linked to tobacco.
"Miracles still happen. The United States Senate has finally said 'no' to Big Tobacco," Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat has championed the bill for more than a decade, said minutes after the Senate's 79-17 vote.
Supporters of regulation of tobacco have struggled for more than a decade to overcome powerful resistance - from the industry and elsewhere. In 2000 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Food and Drug Administration did not have the authority to regulate tobacco products, and the Bush administration opposed several previous efforts by Congress to write a new law.
Final passage "will make history by giving the scientists and medical experts at the FDA the power to take sensible steps that will reduce tobacco's harmful effects and prevent tobacco companies from marketing their products to children," Obama said.
Obama's signature would add tobacco to other huge, nationally important areas that have come under greater government supervision in his presidency. Those include banking, housing, and autos.
Cigarette smoking kills about 400,000 people in the United States every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 45 million US adults are smokers, though the prevalence has fallen since the surgeon general's warning 45 years ago that tobacco causes lung cancer.
The legislation would give the drug agency authority to regulate the content, marketing, and advertising of tobacco products.
The FDA could order changes or bans on products that it determines are a danger to public health, and could limit nicotine yields, though not ban nicotine or cigarettes. Costs of the new program would be paid for through a fee imposed on tobacco companies.
