NCTOH Part 2

So Friday was the last day of the NCTOH conference. Its always interesting to see how many people stick around to the last day and the final sessions. They did bring in a few interesting things to keep people's attention, like our pro-education friend here, or the stop smoking race car that I didn't get a picture of. One big draw however for the closing session of this conference was the topic of the closing session. For those of you who haven't kept up on the world of tobacco control, there's been a bill in Congress the last couple of years about FDA regulation of tobacco products. Thursday it passed the Senate and now just needs to be signed into law by President Obama, which should happen this next week.
This is a HUGE victory for tobacco control because among other things, candy flavored cigarettes will be banned, Larger warnings with pictures will now be required and tobacco companies will have to disclose their ingredients and they can be banned from including unsafe additives. Although it's still unclear all what will happen eventually, the next few years will definitely see some changes. This also opens the door for local legislation that could limit the number of stores etc. that can sell tobacco or even limit tobacco sales to adult only shops, etc. In any case, a big victory for tobacco control.