FDA Subjects Premium Cigars to Regulation

You might already have heard the sad news. From Cigar Rights of America press-release, earlier today:

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (“FDA”) Center for Tobacco Products released their 499 page final rule that would deem additional tobacco products subject to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, as amended by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Under today’s release, premium cigars have been deemed and will be subjected to the “option 1” regulatory framework, which in some respects treats premium cigars in harsher terms than that of cigarettes and other tobacco products.

What does it mean? The main takeaway is that all cigars released after Aug 6 2016 will have to be submitted for approval before they are allowed to the market. Costs and delays of this approval procedure remain unknown.

Charlie Minato from Halfwheel published a great article covering the consequences of this decision in more details. Let’s not forget that this is not necessarily the end for the cigar industry, as we can still fight and adapt.