By Patty Avery

American Cancer Society

Last week, Indiana Sens. Lugar and Bayh courageously joined their colleagues in the U.S. Senate to pass landmark legislation giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate the manufacturing and marketing of tobacco products. They deserve credit and our sincere gratitude. Because of their efforts, we are now closer than ever to reining in a rogue industry that has been able to operate unregulated for far too long.

There is no way to underestimate their historic action. Granting the FDA authority to regulate tobacco products and its marketing will reduce its deadly toll — particularly on our nation’s children.

Today, 3,500 kids will try a cigarette for the first time. Another 1,000 children will become addicted, daily smokers. One-third of those addicted kids will eventually die prematurely as a result of their smoking.

Big Tobacco has a long history of marketing its deadly products to young Americans. While tobacco companies say they’re not marketing to kids, the industry recruits new smokers using despicable marketing practices that prey upon young adults and children with flashy advertising and candy and fruit flavored products. Until now, Big Tobacco has never had to disclose the ingredients in its products, including arsenic and polonium, one of the world’s most radioactive poisons, or the other 4,000 chemicals and more than 60 carcinogens in cigarettes and cigarette smoke.

In the absence of meaningful regulation, the tobacco industry has had dangerously wide latitude to pursue its only goal — to addict more customers and stop current users from quitting. In fact, it is virtually the only legally consumable product still unregulated in the U.S., until now.

The passage of this legislation is an historic moment in the effort to stop Big Tobacco’s deceptive and manipulative marketing practices, which have preyed on children and misled the public about the harm of tobacco for decades. Fortunately, Sens. Lugar and Bayh took the appropriate action to protect all Americans from tobacco-related addiction, disease and premature death.  

For this, our senators deserve our thanks. President Obama has pledged to sign the bill. Let’s hope it reaches his desk quickly and is rapidly implemented by the FDA, because each day we wait, 3,500 more children will pick up their first cigarette.

Patty Avery is state lead ambassador for Indiana, American Cancer Society.