US
A new bill introduced in the House of Representatives in late March is seeking to exempt premium cigars from burdensome FDA regulations.
H.R. 1854, titled the “Traditional Cigar Manufacturing and Small Business Jobs Preservation Act of 2019,” and introduced by Florida Rep. Kathy Castor, is a companion bill to the S.9 bill that was introduced by Marco Rubio earlier this year. Both bills aim to protect handmade and certain premium cigars from FDA regulations and costly user fees, but H.R. 1854 goes a step further by specifying that cigars with “flavor additives” would not be protected as premium cigars. Rubio’s bill does not include language on flavored tobacco.
H.R. 1854 seeks to protect what it calls “traditional large and premium cigars,” which would need to meet the following criteria: any roll of tobacco that is wrapped in 100% leaf tobacco; bunched with 100% tobacco filler; contains no filter, tip, flavor additive, or non-tobacco mouthpiece; weighs at least 6 pounds per 1,000 count; has a 100% leaf tobacco binder and is hand rolled; or has a homogenized tobacco leaf binder and is made in the US using human hands to lay the 100% leaf tobacco wrapper onto only one machine that bunches, wraps, and caps each individual cigar; and does not include a cigarette or a little cigar.