WASHINGTON, July 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As the U.S. Senate
 prepares to mark-up S. 625, a bill that would burden the overworked Food &
 Drug Administration with primary regulatory responsibility for all tobacco
 products, Senator Richard Burr is offering an important amendment.
     "As written, S. 625 is not only a monument to Big Government and
 wasteful spending, it threatens to harm the very people it's supposed to be
 protecting -- America's 45 million smokers," says Chuck Muth, president of
 Citizen Outreach Project, a public policy advocacy organization.
     "The purported aim of the legislation is to improve smokers' health by
 making tobacco products safer, but the current language would effectively
 prohibit the industry from informing smokers that smokeless tobacco
 products are up to 1,000 times safer than cigarettes (a fact confirmed by
 Britain's Royal College of Physicians). Gagging the FDA and the industry
 might further the interests of the world's #1 cigarette marketer, which
 helped write and now lobbies for the bill, but would mean needless
 suffering and deaths for smokers who should be told of the life-saving
 harm-reduction advantages of switching to smokeless."
     Senator Burr's amendment, generally referred to as Amendment #8, would
 at least rationalize the requirements for making a "reduced risk" claim for
 a tobacco product, but only on the basis of substantial proof, such as an
 epidemiologic study or other human studies that lead to significant
 scientific agreement on the risk reduction.
     "In the context of trying to improve an inherently misdirected bill,
 the Burr amendment makes sense," Muth notes. "Without it, S. 625 would make
 it virtually impossible for a reduced risk claim to be approved. The FDA
 (and Congress!) is supposed to be in the business of promoting public
 health. Members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
 Pensions should support Burr Amendment #8 and a national tobacco
 harm-reduction policy, they can at least live with."
 
 

SOURCE Citizen Outreach Project