• public policy
• tobacco industry
• non-cigarette tobacco products

For essentially the entire history of tobacco product regulation in the USA, the tobacco industry has been manipulating its products to exploit regulatory loopholes. From the invention of so-called ‘light’ cigarettes to fool government smoking machines, to the addition of sepiolite (a clay found in cat litter) to increase the weight of cigars in order to receive favourable federal taxation, manufacturers have been finding ways to skirt effective regulation.1 2 While the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA) represents a potential leap forward in regulatory oversight, the law’s bifurcated implementation from 2009 until 2016 meant that tobacco product manufacturers had every incentive to shift their focus away from cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, which were subject to a comprehensive regulatory scheme, to other products such as cigars and e-cigarettes with no federal oversight whatsoever. Little cigars are a textbook example.

Little cigars are cigars in name only. They are the size and shape of cigarettes, are filtered, and sold in packs of twenty. The only distinction between these products and cigarettes is that the paper wrapper of a little cigar is brown rather than white, because manufacturers add a small amount of tobacco to the paper during the manufacturing process. This is done so that the products are classified as cigars for virtually …