Insider Q&A: FDA official on vaping's "promise or peril"
The new chief at the Food and Drug Administration's tobacco center has inherited a raft of problems
WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s been no honeymoon period for the Food and Drug Administration’s new tobacco chief, Brian King, the public health scientist now responsible for regulating the nation’s multibillion-dollar cigarette and vaping industry.
The problems facing FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products have only multiplied since King’s arrival in July from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The FDA missed a summer deadline to review nearly a million applications for e-cigarettes and other new products that use laboratory-made nicotine, some of which have become popular teenagers. Meanwhile, the agency is still a year overdue in reviewing a backlog of hundreds of thousands of older e-cigarettes using traditional nicotine from tobacco.
The FDA tried to ban the leading e-cigarette maker Juul’s products earlier this summer, but it’s been forced to put that effort on hold following a court challenge from the company.
