Ten Years of FDA Tobacco Regulation: Lessons for Public Health Stakeholders

Abstract

In the 10 years that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been regulating tobacco products, the agency has been plagued with setbacks, some of its own making, and some the result of outside forces. What has been consistently true is that the public health community has not had as much of a voice as it should have until public health groups began filing lawsuits against the FDA. This article examines four areas of FDA regulation over the last decade in an attempt to qualitatively describe the work of the Center for Tobacco Products and identify opportunities for public health groups to have greater advocacy success in the future.