List Nicotine as Addictive Drug, Let FDA Regulate It, Koop Urges Panel

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, again emphasizing the addictive properties of nicotine, recommended Friday that the substance be defined as an addictive drug under federal law so that cigarettes and other tobacco products could be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

“It seems to me the law should be changed,” he told members of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health. “Certainly, something should be changed.”

Regulated by FTC

Cigarettes are now regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms of the Treasury Department, which oversees tax collection related to tobacco products, and the Federal Trade Commission, which has authority over advertising. Cigarettes are unregulated under federal statutes related to health issues.

Dr. Frank E. Young, commissioner of the FDA, told the subcommittee that “the agency’s position is that cigarettes, as they have been customarily marketed, are intended solely for smoking purposes or smoking pleasure and are not within FDA’s jurisdiction under the (Food, Drug and Cosmetic) Act.”

He added: “While we are, of course, deeply concerned over the health effects of smoking and chewing tobacco, we do not consider traditional tobacco products to be subject to FDA jurisdiction.”

Last May, Koop released the surgeon general’s annual report on smoking, which focused this year on nicotine addiction. He said then that nicotine was as addictive as cocaine and heroin and recommended that laws restricting the sale of tobacco products to minors be strengthened and expanded, including requiring establishments where tobacco is sold to have a license.

Prevention Stressed

He repeated his call Friday, saying that the government should do “anything we can do to keep young people from starting--it’s better than trying to stop the addiction once it has begun.”

Rep. Terry L. Bruce (D-Ill.) challenged Koop’s comparison of nicotine to heroin and cocaine, saying cigarettes were not “breaking up families,” nor were cigarette smokers breaking “into liquor stores late at night to get money to buy a pack of cigarettes.”

Koop replied: “You take cigarettes off the streets, and people will be breaking into liquor stores.”

Koop added: “I think one of the things that many people confuse is the behavior of cocaine and heroin addicts when they are deprived of the drug. That’s the difference between a licit and an illicit drug. Tobacco is perfectly legal. You can get it whenever you want to satisfy the craving.”

A spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, Charles O. Whitley, complained that Koop’s report “undermines efforts to combat drug abuse.”

“If the mere fact that cigarette smoking produces some pharmacological effects is enough to make smoking an ‘addiction,’ then coffee drinking is also addictive,” he told the subcommittee.

Non-Burning Cigarette

The FDA’s Young said his agency was reviewing petitions from the American Medical Assn., the American Heart Assn., the American Lung Assn. and the American Cancer Society asking the FDA to assume jurisdiction over the marketing of a new “cigarette-like product that involves heating--without burning--tobacco to deliver nicotine,” developed by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

Richard M. Cooper, an attorney representing the cigarette maker, told members of the subcommittee that, in advertising and labeling the product, “Reynolds will make no therapeutic claims for it,” nor would the company imply that it is “safe” or “safer” than any other cigarette. “In our view . . . (the) FDA has no jurisdiction over this cigarette,” he said.