Handing tobacco regulation over to the FDA, as Congress is poised to do, is an epic public health mistake. It is tantamount to giving the keys of the regulatory store to the nation’s largest cigarette manufacturer, Philip Morris.

The legislation that will be voted on shortly in the Senate was cooked up out of public sight by Philip Morris, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Rep. Henry Waxman, and anti-tobacco lobbyists. Philip Morris staffers themselves even wrote large portions of the bill.

There are significant, and numerous, problems with the FDA regulating tobacco, and virtually no benefits to public health. Kennedy, Waxman, and the public health establishment present their legislation as a masterful regulatory stroke that will end tobacco marketing, prevent kids from starting to smoke, make cigarettes less enjoyable to smoke, and reduce adult smoking. But FDA regulation of tobacco will do none of these things.

The bill fails to correctly identify the reasons why young people begin to smoke, and concentrates almost exclusively on restricting tobacco marketing, while leaving the other risk factors for adolescent smoking unaddressed. There is nothing in the proposed legislation that shows the FDA understands the well-documented connections between education, poverty and smoking status, connections that provide the key to helping adults stop smoking.