Op-Ed: Roderick Law: Nicotine prohibitionists flock together

In 2019, when the first Trump administration was deliberating the problem of youth vaping, President Donald Trump warned against outright prohibition of e-cigarettes. “You watch prohibition,” Trump was quoted in Politico. “If you don’t give it to them, it is going to come here illegally…They could be selling something on a street corner that could be horrible..They are going to have a flavor that is poison.”

Unfortunately, the Biden Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) didn’t heed the warning. Under CTP head Brian King, it failed in a core function: authorizing new products that would provide harm reduction. King was among the many deserving HHS bureaucrats fired in the new administration’s house cleaning. Where he ended up speaks volumes about the CTP’s problems. More on that in a minute.

To sell new nicotine products in the United States, companies must file a “premarket tobacco application” and receive a “marketing granted order” from the CTP. Companies pay “user fees” to the FDA to cover the cost of the research and testing on these products. E-cigarettes and vapes have been marketed as a healthier alternative to smoking, having helped many smokers quit. But for years, millions of applications languished at the CTP, and millions more were rejected. (In December, the Supreme Court heard a case against the FDA brought by several manufacturers whose products were rejected. A former CTP official recently told Fox News that under King, CTP authorized “about two products a year.”)

One result is that about 98 percent of the electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) sold in the nation are illegal products, and most of them are made in China. They are cheaper, more potent, and manufactured with far fewer health and safety regulations than American products, and many are flavored, branded and packaged to appeal to children.

King’s bosses at the FDA didn’t make interdicting the illicit vapes a priority. And King certainly didn’t make fulfilling his agency’s mission to approve new products a priority. Why not? Well, that former CTP staffer told Fox that King was an enthusiastic DEI booster who did a lot of “virtue signaling.” And there was the $60,000 trip to a Scottish conference for 10 CTP staffers to discuss how “anti-LGBTQ+ legislation impacts tobacco control research” and address “smoking cessation among transgender individuals in Argentina.”

But mostly, it was incestuous relationships the CTP had with anti-nicotine activist groups, who reject harm-reduction and want outright prohibition of cigarettes and ENDS.

For instance, Kathy Crosby, the current head of the Truth Initiative, was until August 2023 CTP’s Director of the Office of Health Communication and Education. FGI learned from communications obtained by a FOIA request that shortly before she joined the Truth Initiative, Crosby had requested and received tickets to another anti-tobacco group’s annual gala (every good job hunt starts with networking). After that report, another watchdog group filed a complaint with the HHS Inspector General alleging that Ms. Crosby had improperly solicited gifts.

Ms. Crosby is still at Truth Initiative, which recently welcomed an old colleague of hers to the anti-nicotine NGO sector:

We congratulate the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids on the appointment of Dr. Brian King as Executive Vice President of U.S. Programs. His leadership arrives at a critical time during a period of significant transition for public health infrastructure in the United States, as we work to protect hard-won progress in youth prevention, cessation and tobacco control.

Unfortunately, U.S. convenience stores are filled with the evidence of Crosby and King’s “hard won progress.” King’s tenure at CTP was characterized by bureaucratic inertia, ideological capture by activist groups, unhelpful distractions, and institutional arrogance. CTP was ripe for the spring cleaning.

But maybe fewer Argentine transgender people are smoking.

Roderick Law is the Communications Director for the Functional Government Initiative. He is a graduate of the George Washington University, with a BS in international affairs and a MA in security policy studies.