Congress has the opportunity to impact on tobacco control across America by authorizing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tobacco products, a new report says.

Strong, bipartisan legislation is pending in the Senate and the Lower House that would give the FDA authority over the manufacture, distribution, marketing and use of tobacco products, says the Tobacco Control 2007 report released Thursday by the American Lung Association.

"The Congress has an unprecedented opportunity in 2008 to pass this life-saving legislation," said Bernadette Toomey, ALA president and CEO.

Tobacco-related diseases remain the number-one preventable cause of death in America, killing more than 438,000 Americans each year, the ALA says.

In the United States, she observed, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the world's first tobacco control treaty, is languishing since 2004 in "interagency review". As of December 2007, 151 nations, not including the U.S., have ratified the treaty.

According to the report, the tobacco industry spends approximately $36 million a day ($13.1 billion annually) in marketing, in addition to $1.7 million in direct contributions to federal candidates and $96 million supplied to state-level candidates, committees and ballot measure campaigns during the 2005 and 2006 election cycle.