This is what tobacco lobbying money buys...

Every year, tobacco companies spend millions of dollars lobbying various state and federal bodies. This is an example of what that money buys.

Congressman Richard Burr is a Republican representing North Carolina's 5th District. He is also Congress's biggest recipient of money from Big Tobacco. RJ Reynolds and its law firm are Burr's biggest contributors while collectively U.S. tobacco manufacturers have given Burr more money than any other member of the House of Representatives, according the the non-partisan watchdog the Center for Responsive Politics.

Surprise, surprise, Mr. Burr opposes the bill passed last week in the House that gives the FDA regulatory authority over the tobacco industry which, unbelievably, currently escapes any kind of federal oversight and is essentially an unregulated product.

Mr. Burr's opposition is based on two factors: firstly, he argues that far from improving public health, FDA oversight of tobacco "could do more harm than good". His basis for this truly astonishing claim is that the legislation would require tobacco companies to do what everyone else in the food and drug business does - test their products for safety and efficacy before launching them. His argument is that this might prevent tobacco companies from bringing reduced-harm products to market.

The fact is that it is the tobacco companies themselves that have not been particularly interested in developing such products, because a reduced-harm cigarette might imply that the original product was unsafe. This would effectively constitute an admission that smoking was inherently dangerous - something the tobacco industry could never afford to do because it would expose them to substantial liability. This point is discussed at length in Richard Kluger's Pulitzer-prize winning expose of the US tobacco industry, Ashes to Ashes.

In 1964 the Surgeon General first linked smoking with lung cancer and heart disease. Since then, the industry has had over 40 years to create a reduced-harm product in a market free from any regulation but has failed to do so. In that time an estimated 20m Americans have died from smoking-related diseases. Enough. The tobacco industry is NOT in the business of saving smokers, and it is self-serving and egregiously disrespectful to try to pretend it is.

Mr. Burr's second concern is that gaining oversight over tobacco would 'severely impede the FDA's core mission'. According to the FDA website, their core mission is described thus: "The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy, and security of...drugs, biological products,...(and) our nation’s food supply. The FDA is also responsible for advancing the public health by helping to speed innovations that make medicines and foods more effective, safer, and more affordable; and helping the public get the accurate, science-based information they need to use medicines and foods to improve their health."

It is difficult to see how gaining regulatory oversight for a product that kills 400,000 Americans annually is 'severely impeding' the FDA's protection of the public health. Quite the opposite actually - it is exactly what the FDA was set up to do.

Mr. Burr argues that the FDA is a busy agency and that taking responsiblity for tobacco products would stretch their resources too much. But this is like cutting your head off to cure a headache. If the FDA needs a bigger budget to handle this extended remit, then rather than allow a business that kills nearly half-a-million Americans a year to continue to escape Federal oversight, let's get a bigger budget. So here's an idea: implement a $1 federal tax on a pack of smokes to fund the FDA's work in overseeing tobacco. The US has (by far) the lowest tobacco tax rate of any developed nation. The current tax on a pack of smokes is 39 cents. To put this into perspective the tax rates in Europe and Canada vary between $2 and $10 per pack. A $1 increase in Federal tobacco tax would still leave the US with the cheapest cigarettes in the Western world, and also create an estimated $9 billion in additional revenue - more than enough to fund FDA oversight of tobacco, in fact nearly enough to fund the whole agency!

In advancing Big Tobacco's interests over those of American consumers, Mr. Burr is choosing money over humanity - a campaign contribution over the lives of the 400,000 Americans killed by this awful drug every year. I have never seen a stronger argument for campaign finance reform and for getting business out of politics.