FDA Launches Center for Tobacco Products

It's gratifying to see the FDA taking it's first steps to reduce illness and death caused by tobacco products.

Cigarette smoking causes an estimated 438,000 deaths, or about 1 of every 5 deaths, each year, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adults who smoke cigarettes die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers. The leading cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD, including emphysema, is tobacco smoking. COPD is projected to be the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020 due to an increase in smoking rates and demographic changes in many countries.

As a lung transplant recipient I have an opportunity to meet and chat with other recipients and those on waiting lists on a regular basis. COPD is one of the major reasons they require a transplant in order to live. It's easy to see from the following table how big a role smoking plays in lung transplantation.

As of 2005, the most common reasons for lung transplantation in the United States were:

• 27% chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD, including emphysema;


• 16% idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis;


• 14% cystic fibrosis;


• 12% idiopathic (formerly known as "primary") pulmonary hypertension;


• 5% alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency;


• 2% replacing previously transplanted lungs that have since failed;


• 24% other causes, including bronchiectasis and sarcoidosis.

Medscape Pulmonary Medicine

August 20, 2009 — The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced the launch of a new division, the Center for Tobacco Products, "in an historic effort to curb the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by those products each year."

The new center will oversee the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in June 2009. The law requires that the FDA set performance standards, review premarket applications for new and modified-risk tobacco products, and establish and enforce advertising and promotion restrictions.

The Center for Tobacco Products' first director will be Lawrence Deyton, MD, MSPH, an expert on veterans' health issues, public health, and tobacco use, and a clinical professor of medicine and health policy at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC.

Between 1999 and 2007, Dr. Deyton revamped the Veteran Administration's smoking and tobacco use cessation programs. Current smoking rates among veterans enrolled in the programs fell from 33% to 22% during his 9-year tenure.

"We are thrilled to announce Dr. Deyton's appointment as director of the Center for Tobacco Products and look forward to him joining the agency," said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, MD, according to an FDA news release announcing the center's launch. "He is the rare combination of public health expert, administrative leader, scientist, and clinician."

Cigarette smoking causes an estimated 438,000 deaths, or about 1 of every 5 deaths, each year, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adults who smoke cigarettes die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers.

The Center for Tobacco Products "will use the best available science to guide the development and implementation of effective public health strategies to reduce the burden of illness and death caused by tobacco products," the FDA said in the release.

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