With Vape Curbs Pending, White House Questions FDA Tobacco Role
- Top policy official calls FDA tobacco regulation ‘moronic’
- Trump calls for raising purchase age for vape products to 21
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
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Regulating tobacco is a waste of time for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a top White House official said, as the Trump administration prepared to unveil new measures designed to curtail an alarming surge in nicotine vaping by teenagers.
Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, called the FDA’s regulation of tobacco “a huge waste of time” and said the agency should focus on approving and monitoring new drugs. He said the agency had been “sucked in the mud” dealing with tobacco rather than approving more drugs or focusing on serious illnesses.