Last month, the Reagan-Udall Foundation delivered a damning review of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) performance as a tobacco regulator. Reagan-Udall, an independent body responsible for helping the FDA advance its mission, was tasked by FDA Commissioner Robert Califf with investigating what is going wrong at the agency after a series of embarrassing missteps concerning the regulation of safer nicotine alternatives, like e-cigarettes, to traditional cigarettes. Reagan-Udall convened an expert panel and received input from an array of stakeholders and scholars, including Michelle Minton, a senior fellow at Reason Foundation.
The final report, which found FDA “struggled to function
