Republicans Should Snuff Out Deadly Tobacco Rules

Last month, Republican U.S. House leaders sent a pointed letter to federal agency heads warning them against finalizing “midnight regulations” — last-minute rules approved during a lame-duck session, without full oversight and hearings. Hastily approved regulations, they wrote, could have “unintended consequences” that “will harm consumers and businesses.”

That’s a sensible warning, and a precursor to President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to roll back counterproductive federal rules. But if the new president and Congress want a good specific place to start, they need not focus on the shady stuff rammed through by federal bureaucrats before the presidential transition. They can begin with a set of Food and Drug Administration tobacco rules that have been moving ahead glacially and in full daylight, but which are so fraught with unintended consequences and so harmful to consumers and businesses that it’s hard to understand how they got this far.

We’re referring to the “deeming” rules the FDA approved last summer and which — barring an act of congressional or Trumpian intervention — will go into effect August 2018.
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