Obama signs landmark law to regulate tobacco

By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, citing his own struggle to give up smoking, signed a law on Monday giving the U.S. government broad regulatory power for the first time over cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Obama said the law would curb the ability of tobacco companies to market their products to the young.

"Almost 90 percent of all smokers began at or before their 18th birthday," Obama said at a White House ceremony before signing the bill.

"I know -- I was one of these teenagers, and so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it's been with you for a long time."

Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said Obama's smoking habit was "something that he continues to struggle with." He declined to answer directly whether the president still smoked.

The law followed a campaign by tobacco industry foes in Congress for more than a decade to put cigarettes under the control of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

It allows the FDA to put strict limits on the manufacturing and marketing of tobacco products but stops short of allowing it to ban cigarettes or their addictive ingredient nicotine.

Nearly 20 percent of Americans smoke, and tobacco use kills about 440,000 people a year in the United States due to cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other ailments.