Specialty Tobacco Council Incorporated

Mission

The Specialty Tobacco Council does not believe that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be granted the authority to regulate the tobacco products industry. Consequently, the STC is opposed to any legislation designed to place the tobacco industry under the regulatory authority of the FDA.

There are many reasons why the STC members feel this way, principal among them are the following:

1. There has been no demonstrated need that calls for FDA supervision of tobacco.
2. The FDA has little or no background or experience in the tobacco industry. There are a number of government agencies with far more experience regulating tobacco, such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Department of Agriculture and the National Institute of Health, among others.
3. The cost of staffing the FDA with personnel to handle the tobacco industry would be extremely prohibitive and unnecessary in light of the background and regulatory authority already possessed by the agencies mentioned above.
4. The cost of complying with endless FDA bureaucratic requirem would undoubtedly drive many small companies out of business and as a result leave the market only to a few large tobacco companies who have the financial and personnel resources to comply with a massive, newly created bureaucracy.