Company Claims to Make Safer Smokeless Tobacco

Star Scientific, a Virginia-based company, has petitioned the FDA to approve the sale of what it claims is a "safer" smokeless tobacco. Stonewall Moist-BDL is a tobacco lozenge that the manufacturer claims contains 90% to 99% less carcinogens than currently marketed smokeless tobacco products. Under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act passed in 2009, the FDA is authorized to regulate tobacco products, and the company is hoping to receive the "modified risk" label that the FDA is working to develop. Like cigarettes, smokeless tobacco is addictive and considered harmful to human health.