Erin Byrnes, Quit Coach, Service Delivery:

The Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Health are teaming up to launch a comprehensive study to find out if recent tobacco regulations have had an impact on smoking rates. In 2009, Congress granted power to the FDA to tell the tobacco industry what they can and cannot do when marketing their products. Since the passage of the Tobacco Control Act, health warnings on cigarette packaging have gotten larger and marketing to kids has been restricted.

We already know so much about the habits of smokers, the most effective ways to quit tobacco, and what works to deter kids from ever starting to smoke in the first place. Yet we still can't seem to significantly reduce smoking rates. The new study is being launched to help guide the development of more effective measures to reduce the colossal burden tobacco has on the health of our nation. Smoking is responsible for almost 500,000 deaths every year in the United States and smoking related healthcare costs are close to $100 billion annually.

Although there were huge drops in smoking rates when the Surgeon General warnings first appeared on cigarette packs in the 60’s and 70’s, more recent attempts to regulate tobacco products have not shown significant reductions in the number of people who smoke in this country. The CDC reports that since 2004, the U.S. has not seen any real decrease in tobacco use.

Even with successful programs that help people quit smoking, people are still starting to smoke at staggering rates. Maybe it is because the tobacco companies side-step new rules intended to protect public health by searching for loopholes and extracting interpretations well-suited to their own agenda. Or perhaps it is because of their massive lobbying efforts against tobacco regulations, or that they convolute and block existing regulation efforts with litigation based on claims about free speech violations. People, especially youth and those without access to information about the true dangers of tobacco use, are repeatedly preyed upon with misleading statements and underhanded practices that downplay risks and are meant to get and keep them hooked.

It is possible that it has also been too complicated to impose directives of the magnitude needed to make a real impact on public health without research backing them. The results of this in-depth study of more than 40,000 tobacco consumers, the largest of its kind, aim to provide a clearer picture about what messages people are getting, how those messages are influencing their tobacco use, and how the FDA should use its authority to empower and protect the health of all the American people. Time will tell, but the clock is ticking. Smoking has killed 30 people in the U.S. since you started reading this.