Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the U.S. Food and Drug Administration\u2019s (FDA) regulation of handcrafted premium cigars. As a result, FDA no longer has authority to regulate premium cigars. This is a major victory for the premium cigar industry and is the result of seven years of litigation. FDA could appeal this decision or restart the complex, multi-year process of trying to re-regulate premium cigars, but both seem unlikely.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will never forget this day,\u201d said Drew Newman, fourth-generation owner and general counsel of J.C. Newman Cigar Co. in Tampa, Florida. \u201cFor the past seven years, we have been living in regulatory purgatory, knowing that scientific evidence does not support regulating premium cigars like cigarettes and complying with FDA regulation could crush America\u2019s historic premium cigar industry, which is largely comprised of small, family-owned businesses like ours.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2016, FDA decided to treat handcrafted premium cigars like cigarettes and other mass-market tobacco products and subject them to a massive regulatory regime. Unlike mass-produced products like cigarettes, premium cigars are boutique products, handcrafted in small batches largely by small, family businesses. The cost to comply with FDA\u2019s countless requirements for reporting, testing, and labeling threatened to destroy the premium cigar industry. On July 5, 2022, Judge Amit P. Mehta held that FDA\u2019s decision to regulate premium cigars was \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d because the agency failed to consider evidence showing that premium cigars are used in moderation and have limited health effects. Today, Judge Mehta announced that the appropriate remedy is striking down regulation of premium cigars.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not anti-regulation,\u201d said Newman. \u201cThe United States has regulated cigars since the 1790s. After today\u2019s decision, premium cigars will still be regulated by ATF, CBP, FTC, TTB, and other federal agencies. Our family\u2019s goal is to hand roll cigars 100 years from now the same way that we do today and that we did 100 years ago. FDA\u2019s attempt to overregulate and treat premium cigars like cigarettes would have made this impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCongress told FDA to regulate youth access and addiction in tobacco,\u201d said Newman. \u201cFDA regulation of premium cigars never made sense because, for nearly a decade, we presented evidence to FDA confirming that children do not smoke premium cigars, that adults enjoy premium cigars in moderation, and the health effects of such moderate use are limited. Last year, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine issued a 520-page report on premium cigars and largely agreed with our analysis of the science, concluding that the overall risk of premium cigars is \u2018modest.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Although today\u2019s decision is a clear victory for the premium cigar industry, the Court only provided relief for premium cigars that are entirely handmade, including those that J.C. Newman imports from Latin America. The Court did not include cigars rolled by hand-operated, antique cigar machines from the 1930s in J.C. Newman Cigar Company\u2019s 112-year-old El Reloj cigar factory in Tampa, the last traditional cigar factory still operating in the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough we are thrilled that the Court has provided relief for cigars made entirely by hand, my family and I are disappointed that the Court did not provide relief for our historic Tampa cigar factory as well, particularly given that the science is the same\u201d said Newman. \u201cBecause we want to keep America\u2019s cigar-making tradition alive, we will continue to petition the government to treat the cigars we handcraft in Tampa just like premium cigars imported from overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family and I are very grateful to our industry\u2019s three trade associations, the Cigar Association of America (CAA), Cigar Rights of America (CRA), and the Premium Cigar Association, for joining together to challenge FDA\u2019s decision to regulate cigars in court five years ago,\u201d said Newman. \u201cWe are especially thankful to CRA, whose 2014 comments Judge Mehta cited as the primary basis for today\u2019s decision and who funded the part of the litigation that led to today\u2019s landmark decision. We appreciate Michael Edney\u2019s advocacy in litigating this case for the past 6 years, and we remain very grateful to Congresswoman Kathy Castor (D-FL) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) for their unwavering support of Florida\u2019s historic premium cigar industry in Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Court Found FDA\u2019s Decision to Regulate Premium Cigars to be \u201cArbitrary and Capricious\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":40932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[177,49,2808,44],"tags":[2537,6635],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64610,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64609\/revisions\/64610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}