APRIL 24, 2014

FDA ISSUES DEEMING NEW TOBACCO REGULATIONS, PREMIUM CIGARS MAY BE SPARED

Nearly matching the Hawaii Cigar Association's definition of a "premium cigar", the FDA today announced that premium cigars may be exempted from deeming new federal regulations.  Read full regulatory proposal here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2014-09491.pdf

Under the new law the FDA would propose to define a covered cigar to mean: any cigar as defined in this part, except a cigar that: (1) Is wrapped in whole tobacco leaf; (2) contains a 100 percent leaf tobacco binder; (3) contains primarily long filler tobacco; (4) is made by combining manually the wrapper, filler, and binder; (5) has no filter, tip, or non-tobacco mouthpiece and is capped by hand; (6) has a retail price (after any discounts or coupons) of no less than $10 per cigar 3 (adjusted, as necessary, every 2 years, effective July 1st, to account for any increases in the price of tobacco products since the last price adjustment); (7) does not have a characterizing flavor other than tobacco; and (8) weighs more than 6 pounds per 1000 units. 

This is certainly good news for the premium cigar industry and all those businesses that make traditional hand made cigars.  More links to this breaking news:

 http://www.cigaraficionado.com/webfeatures/show/id/17604

http://www.jacobgrier.com/blog/archives/6625.html

http://www.cspnet.com/category-management-news-data/tobacco-news-data/articles/fdas-premium-dilemma

Through the Cigar Rights of America the public now has 75 days to submit comments to the FDA at http://cigarrights.org/fda-response.php  Follow the instructions for submitting comments.