Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/743340
tobaccoasia 21 Boegli.ch STORY TELL YOUR BRAND Boegli–Gravures can help you to develop subtle, refined and ingenious ways of elevating your brand's characteristics and enhance your consumer brand experience. Let us partner with you to bring new dimensions to your marketing. Sans titre-1 6 12.05.2015 12:04:10 that a label change on a tobacco product does not mean the agency should consider it to be a new product. Judge Mehta's ruling sided with complaints made by many tobacco companies: that a product shouldn't be considered new if the only thing that changed was the packaging. In his ruling, he wrote that under the act, "a modification to an existing product's label does not result in a new tobacco product, and therefore such a label change does not give rise to the act's substantial equivalence review process." However, he did rule that a change in quantity of the product in the packaging (such as switching the number of cigars in a box from 20 to 10 sticks) does constitute a new tobacco product that would need FDA approval. Since any cigar introduced after August 8 will be subject to pre-market approval by FDA, many products were rushed to market before the dead- line, sometimes without finalized packaging. Prior to this lawsuit, manufacturers would have been legally bound to make only "minor" changes to packaging, meaning any cigar shipped with plain bands or plain boxes would have had to remain in a similar packaging or risk a major packaging change, triggering substantial amounts for the brand owners. While there is hope after this lawsuit, the path to victory is uncertain and certainly expensive, and Congress might actually be the premium cigar community's best hope. The House Appropriations Committee has re- cently passed a draft of its FY2017 agriculture bill, including two provisions that would directly affect today's rule: - the first provision would exempt premium cigars from FDA regulation - the other would change the grandfather date to August 8, 2017 Exempting premium cigars is less controver- sial than changing the grandfather date (as this would also grandfather in most of the e-cigarette industry) and the hope for cigar smokers now lies in the cigar-friendly members of Congress. But it might not happen until after the November elec- tions. In the two main cigar markets that are Europe and the US, the cocktail shaker contains a good dose of inane legislation, a dash of paternalism, and a pinch of bitterness. Not the best cocktail in- deed, but one we will have to drink nevertheless, praying we don't all choke on it. Sources: halfwheel.com, cigaraficionado.com, thecigarau- thority.com, miamiherald.com, mikescigar.com