Officials with the Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center are finalizing their offerings of reference tobacco. Center Managing Director Orlando Chambers says raw tobacco is placed in bottles and used for comparison against commercial products. He says the program falls within the new purview of a federal agency. “Now, the FDA has regulatory authority over tobacco products and as part of developing that science, you have to be able to analyze the tobacco that’s in cigarettes or smokeless tobacco products,” said Chambers.
"We will do an analysis of those, so we will be able to say this is the level of nicotine, or it might be the level of some other constituent and then other testing labs would be able to use that as a control or comparison in other types of experiments,” explained Chambers.
The Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center has produced reference cigarettes for years. The Kentucky Tobacco Research Board was briefed last week on the distribution of 50 million reference cigarettes. ?
