By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ senators and a state health official said legislation passed by the U.S. Senate on Thursday will restrict tobacco companies from targeting children.

Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, both D-Ark., voted with the majority as the Senate passed, 79-17, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The measure would for the first time give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate the content, marketing and advertising of tobacco products.

The House passed a similar but not identical version in April. The two versions must be reconciled before the measure goes to President Obama, who supports it.

“The tobacco industry has a long and disturbing history of marketing its products to appeal to young people,” Lincoln said in a statement. “While tobacco companies claim they do not target our children, their advertisements tell us otherwise.

“Tobacco companies know that almost all new smokers begin as kids, so they carefully design their products in order to make them more attractive to young people, through advertising, brightly colored packaging and fruity flavors and other chemical additives.”

Each year, Lincoln said, 13,100 Arkansas children try their first cigarette and 3,900 Arkansas children become daily smokers.

“By passing this legislation, the Senate has acted to put our children first,” she said.

Pryor said Thursday that despite their danger, cigarettes have been exempt from the basic health regulations that apply to other consumer products, and tobacco companies have taken advantage of that leeway, particularly in marketing campaigns targeting teenagers.

“The overall goal of the legislation is to reduce youth smoking, prevent the sale of tobacco to minors, help current smokers quit, reduce the toxicity of tobacco products and stop the tobacco industry from misleading the public with their understated claims about the dangers of using tobacco products,” Pryor said. “This bill will go a long way towards keeping tobacco companies honest about the safety of their products and improve our nation’s efforts to stop kids from smoking.”

Suzanne McCarthy, a senior associate with the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, said Arkansas health officials are “thrilled” by the Senate’s passage of the bill.

“It certainly augments the work that the most recent legislative session has engaged in around tobacco,” McCarthy said, referring to a 56-cents-per-pack increase in the state cigarette tax that legislators passed this year to fund various health programs.

Health officials have said they expect the tax increase to lead to a reduction in smoking.

If the federal bill becomes law, McCarthy said, tobacco companies will no longer be able to make unsubstantiated claims about the supposedly low or reduced risks associated with some of their products.

“Now they’re going to have to have really bona fide scientific studies to prove that those products are less-risk products,” she said.

Joe D. Bell, a Little Rock lobbyist whose clients include tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, declined to comment Thursday on the bill’s passage in the Senate.

Bell referred questions to R.J. Reynolds’ corporate headquarters. The company did not immediately return a phone message left Thursday at its main office in Winston-Salem, N.C., seeking comment.