In addition to the following email sent to the supporters of the CRA; The Cigar Rights of America has also shared how they plan to go about the potential regulations. We have omitted that from this posting.
From the CRA:
Today, The White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) – Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs published that they have received a Draft Final Rule for deeming cigars subject to federal regulation.
As you are aware, Cigar Rights of America notified corporate benefactors of the anticipated receipt of the rule on September 18. It was indeed scheduled to arrive at The White House Office of Management & Budget Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) over the course of that week.
FDA completed work on the draft final rule, we confirmed, and the document was in Departmental Clearance at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Service (HHS.) HHS has a clearance process for all documents going to The White Office of Management & Budget Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and that process sometimes takes longer than anticipated.
For a rule of this size and complexity, HHS (probably) gave some extra scrutiny to the Rule, and worked to insure that all relevant parties within the Department and at DPC were briefed on the outline of the Draft Rule. The HHS clearance process can take a significant amount of time, and was a formality.
We have had good reason to believe that OIRA has been in possession of the Final Rule for the last several weeks. Now that this acknowledgement is public, we are working with our consulting team of Radiant Strategies and former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu to schedule briefings with OMB staff and leadership.
