WASHINGTON – Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL) has announced the introduction of legislation to protect small and family-owned cigar businesses across America from overly-burdensome federal regulation.
Specifically, this legislation: (1) Clarifies ambiguity surrounding premium cigars by enshrining case law rulings into statute; (2) Ensures that the FDA focuses on its mission with regard to tobacco rather than imposing a regulatory regime on a credible industry that is globally respected.
Background:
FDA struggled to determine whether there should be two categories of cigars subject to the 2009 "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act" (TCA)—one for premium cigars and one for the rest of the cigar industry.
This has prompted discussion around how a premium cigar should be defined.
Being subject to the TCA requires the small, family-owned businesses that produce premium cigars to pay significant FDA user fees (up to 5 cents per cigar sold) in addition to excise taxes, while also undergoing the time-consuming, paper-work heavy and expensive Premarket Tobacco Application process (PMTA) that FDA estimates could cost up to $400,000 per cigar style.
Premium cigar manufacturers produce thousands of styles. For example, a handcrafted 5-inch Robusto and a handcrafted 6-inch Robusto would be two different styles, yet the only difference would be the length of the cigar.
Stare Decisis:
On August 9, 2023, according to Judge Mehta, a premium cigar is wrapped in whole tobacco leaf; contains a 100 percent leaf tobacco binder; contains at least 50 percent (of the filler by weight) long filler tobacco (i.e., whole tobacco leaves that run the length of the cigar); is handmade or hand rolled (i.e., no machinery was used apart from simple tools, such as scissors to cut the tobacco prior to rolling); has no filter, nontobacco tip, or nontobacco mouthpiece; does not have a characterizing flavor other than tobacco; contains only tobacco, water, and vegetable gum with no other ingredients or additives; and (8) weighs more than 6 pounds per 1,000 units.
