The national and international regulatory environment in tobacco control

Despite their lethality, cigarettes are subject to little regulation that directly restricts their contents or their legality. This may change in the near future with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world's first global health treaty, now in force, as well as developments in a few individual countries. Cigarettes are subject to a substantial number of country-specific regulations regarding their conditions of sale: their price (mostly through taxation), the places where they can be consumed (clean indoor air laws), who can smoke them (prohibitions on their use by or sales to minors), how they can be advertised or promoted (if at all), and how they must be packaged (minimum pack sizes, warning labels, plain packaging). Such policies constitute the core of successful tobacco control. The FCTC has been ratified by 180 countries representing 90% of the world's population. The FCTC requires compliance with numerous provisions relating to the kinds of regulations noted above. The treaty also mandates explicit attention to direct product regulation. Several countries have such authority, at least in limited forms. In the US, for example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now has the legal authority to regulate tobacco products, including their contents. The possibility exists that, in the foreseeable future, a country will mandate product standards that will substantially reduce the appeal of cigarettes and other combusted tobacco products, which are by far the leading sources of the death and disease associated with tobacco.