South Florida Personal Injury Blog

For decades, the federal Food and Drug Administration has been regulating everything from cosmetics to chemotherapy medications. One of its most important functions, of course, is food safety, including regulating the food production industry to prevent contamination and food poisoning problems. The FDA is also responsible for approving prescription medications to go on the market, says Fort Lauderdale personal injury attorney Andrew Alitowski, as well as which drugs are safe for over-the-counter sales.

Recently, Congress passed a bill that will allow the FDA to regulate tobacco in addition to its other responsibilities. While this may seem obvious, in that the agency already regulates so many other consumer products to ensure safety, it is a major shift in policy, says Broward injury lawyer Alitowski.

The powerful tobacco industry has managed largely to prevent federal regulation until this point. The FDA will be allowed to issue broad marketing regulations, such as measures that prevent tobacco companies from launching advertising campaigns aimed at children, ban certain ingredients which are harmful to human health, and even ban the companies from giving tobacco products sugary flavors, like fruit or candy. One of the most important measures the FDA will now have authority to implement is adding bigger, very specific health warnings above and beyond the current standard Surgeon General’s warnings placed on cigarette packaging.

Fort Lauderdale injury attorney Alitowski says the new regulatory scheme is a major loss for Big Tobacco. In fact, the companies have arguably been on a downward spiral in terms of luck since they lost a major lawsuit in Florida in 2006. Although the class-action was ultimately overturned on appeal, individual plaintiffs are now taking their wrongful death and personal injury cases to trial throughout Florida – and it will likely cost the companies millions of dollars. The first such case went to trial in February and resulted in a victory for the widow of a man who died of cancer brought on by smoking cigarettes. Her husband could not kick his nicotine addiction, even as he was dying.