The Sudafed Solution to the Vaping Problem

David A. Kessler has cred. As the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in the 1990s, he was a general in the war against Big Tobacco. On his watch, an FDA advisory panel declared nicotine addictive, infuriating the cigarette companies. He also tried to regulate cigarettes, though the Supreme Court eventually ruled that was an overreach. When Congress passed the Tobacco Control Act in 2009, finally giving the FDA authority over tobacco products, much of the legislation was borrowed from Kessler’s pathbreaking ideas.

Now a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, Kessler has stayed out of the fight between the pro- and anti-vaping camps, but he’s never stopped thinking about how to reduce the death and disease that result from smoking cigarettes.