House Democrats said Wednesday the Food and Drug Administration should have the authority to regulate tobacco to stop cigarette manufacturers from marketing their products to teens, a practice which produces life-long addictions that end in severe illness and death.

But Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, as well as FDA Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach, said the bill (HR 1108) could undermine the agency’s mission to improve public health.

In August, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved legislation (S 625) to give the FDA the power to regulate tobacco, financed by a fee charged to tobacco manufacturers amounting to about 2.5 cents per pack of cigarettes. Higher tobacco taxes also would finance a $35 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in legislation (HR 976) that President Bush vetoed Wednesday (See related story this issue, CQ HealthBeat, Oct. 3, 2007).

At Wednesday’s hearing, panel Democrats said legislative action is needed now to stop more children from becoming addicted to tobacco. “Every day, 4,000 kids try a cigarette for the first time. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every day 1,140 of our children become new daily smokers,” said Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr., D-N.J. “This means that since the beginning of this year . . . 313,400 children have become tobacco addicts. And one-third of those kids will end up dying prematurely from tobacco-related illnesses.”

Pallone and others noted that tobacco kills plenty of grown-ups too, making it the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Several lawmakers cited statistics that tobacco kills more than 400,000 Americans every year and costs the health care system more than $96 billion annually. Forty-five million Americans now smoke, lawmakers said.

Proponents of the bill said it makes no sense to have the FDA regulate the food and medicines — including nicotine patches used to help people stop smoking — that Americans consume, but not regulate tobacco products or cigarette marketing practices.

“Like me, most people find it shocking that a cigarette is subject to less regulation than a lollipop,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., the chief sponsor of the House measure. “In the absence of comprehensive regulation, tobacco companies can market freely to kids. The industry has the unfettered ability to engineer their products to trigger quick and severe addiction.”

Panel Republicans said they shared the same goals of reducing the numbers of Americans who smoke and stopping kids from starting the habit but questioned of goal of FDA regulation. Some suggested that another federal agency, the Federal Trade Commission, might be better suited to regulate tobacco, and that other federal health programs are already at work to prevent and discourage tobacco use.

Opponents of FDA tobacco regulation have said it makes no sense for the FDA to regulate a product that cannot be shown to be safe or to have any health benefits. Rep. Michael C. Burgess, R-Texas, who said he watched both of his parents die of lung diseases related to smoking, suggested such FDA regulation would be a waste of tax dollars. “What have you got next in line, crystal meth?” Burgess asked.

Rep. Joe L. Barton of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the measure would place more burdens on an already overburdened FDA, and that states needed to use more of the money they received through the 1998 master tobacco settlement on programs to reduce smoking.

In written remarks, von Eschenbach, who did not testify at the hearing, said the bill could undermine FDA’s public health role, the legislation could be extremely difficult for the agency to implement and may not provide enough financial resources.

Provisions in the bill authorizing pre-market approval of new and reduced-risk tobacco products are particularly troubling, von Eschenbach said, because “we are concerned that FDA ‘approval’ of tobacco problems may become confused with the agency’s regulation of therapeutic products, such as drugs and devices.”

“We are concerned that the public will believe that products ‘approved’ by the agency are safe and that this will actually encourage individuals to smoke more, rather than less,” von Eschenbach wrote.