This is the story of a regulatory agency misaligned with its mission, mandates, & messaging, where superficial oversight has created a U.S. tobacco market that is effectively unregulated.

Agents of the Current Thinking by Christy Leppanen
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They told Congress and the public that we used evidence to determine if tobacco products should be authorized for sale in the U.S.

They told them, “We want to make sure that we are abiding by the law and what Congress intended, and so we have a very clear scientific bar.”

They told them that “scientific bar is critical,” that “Congress got it right in requiring that scientific standard.” They said, “We're not going to jeopardize that,” that “high necessary scientific bar.”

They told them, “We're not going to jeopardize the science, and we also need to make sure that our actions are legally defensible, and that takes time.”

They told them that we used “rigorous scientific evidence” in “extensive scientific reviews.”

Instead, we used unscientific, ignorant, and misleading arguments to facilitate the sale of tobacco products. They told us, “The Office of Science policy is not to, if there is a marketing order to be issued [for a tobacco product], not to delay that."

The first Trump administration blindfolded, zip tied, and drove an already struggling federal agency off a cliff. The Biden administration then played politics while it dangled on a thin tether. And the second Trump administration cut the cable.