What CTP Does
The Tobacco Control Act gives FDA Center for Tobacco Products the authority to regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products. This enables us to make tobacco-related disease and death part of America’s past, not its future—and to ensure a healthier life for every family. We have moved science-based tobacco regulation forward and started a rigorous tobacco research program.
Protecting Youth
- Issuing and enforcing regulations that restrict youth access to cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, and smokeless tobacco
- Removing cigarettes with characterizing flavors, such as candy and fruit, from the market
- Issuing and enforcing restrictions on marketing and promotion, such as the minimum pack size of 20 cigarettes
- Proposing a rule to extend its tobacco authority to cover additional tobacco products
Providing Information to Help Educate Consumers
- Enforcing prohibitions on misleading labeling and advertising claims that imply that products are safe or safer without evidence
- Requiring tobacco companies to report on the quantities of harmful or potentially harmful constituents
- Enforcing smokeless tobacco warning requirements
- Creating “The Real Cost,” FDA’s first national public education campaign designed to prevent young people from using tobacco
More information on Public Education Campaigns
Ensuring Compliance with the Law
- Inspecting tobacco product retailers across the United States
- Issuing warning letters to retailers observed to be in violation
- Publishing guidance to help industry members meet their obligations under the law
More information on Compliance and Enforcement
Reviewing New Products and Product Changes
- Working to ensure that any new tobacco product authorized through the substantial equivalence pathway will not present more harm to public health than the product with which it was compared
More information on Policy, Rulemaking, and Guidance
Leading Cutting-Edge Research
- Establishing a world-class testing laboratory for tobacco products, in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- Partnering with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to dramatically increase regulatory science capabilities. Projects underway include:
- The Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study, the first longitudinal study of patterns of tobacco use over time
- Helping to establish 14 Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS)
More information on Regulation through Research