The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, 2009

Several decades of tobacco control efforts in the United States were consolidated with the passage of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA) in 2009. This legislation authorized the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate aspects of the manufacturing, marketing, and sale of tobacco products. Its provisions included requiring the premarket review of all new tobacco products, granting FDA authority to require changes to existing tobacco products, protecting youth from tobacco marketing and access to tobacco products, the remit to develop graphic warning labels for cigarette packages, requiring scientific evidence to support tobacco industry claims of “modified risk” for tobacco products and prohibiting certain claims outright (e.g., “light” or “low”), listing of tobacco products’ ingredients, and preserving states’ and other jurisdictions’ ability to make and enact additional tobacco control laws.