In 2017, Scott Gottlieb, then-commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), conceptualized a “Comprehensive Approach to Nicotine and Tobacco.”
This was an approach in which the nation’s leading health agency would “envision a world” that “recognize[s] the potential for innovation to lead to less harmful products … a world where less harmful alternative forms, efficiently delivering satisfying levels of nicotine, are available for those adults who need or want them.”
In the five years since, the FDA has lost sight of that world by shuttering and arbitrarily blocking innovation in tobacco harm reduction. On August 23, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found the agency’s recent regulatory actions of vapor products to be “arbitrary and capricious.”
It is unfortunate that adult access to tobacco harm reduction products in America has always been caught between the FDA and the courts.
Lindsey Stroud – The Center Square – 2022-08-25.
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