US FDA targets cigarettes to broaden fight against addiction

The move shocked Washington and Wall Street, sending tobacco stocks reeling

Eight years after it was given the power to meaningfully change smoking in America, the US Food and Drug Administration moved to do so.

On Friday, the FDA announced it would take advantage of powers in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act — a law enacted under a Democratic Congress and then-President Obama — to cut the level of nicotine in cigarettes to nonaddictive levels.

“A lot of people have been thinking about this for a long time, including experts in the agency, including myself,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in an interview with Bloomberg on