U.S. HHS and Court News

How will this help or hurt people who smoke?

It’s been a roller-coaster ride in the US!

Over the past few weeks, it has been a wild ride from #NIHobbling with grant cuts to #HealtHobbling via HHS staff cuts to the latest from SCOTUS and other legal battles!

My heart breaks witnessing the cruel cuts of jobs and funding. My anxiety meter has been on “high” for weeks. I worry how this chainsaw method of cutting expenses is going to harm the health of people all over the world, diminish the credibility of the United States, and send us back in time to when marginalized people were ignored or targeted in abusive ways.

Not nicotine specific: HHS cuts: the method was the madness. “But even if the impact on American health is minimal—even if somehow things were to get better from here—that will never justify the cruel manner in which these reductions were implemented.”

DEI, Language, and Grants

• Anger, despair, and defiance from a voice within the US federal research system. “I am a researcher within the federal system, and I hope that you will forgive me and understand why I am publishing this piece anonymously. The very fact that I am having to publish this anonymously in a country that has the right to free speech written into our Constitution is an indictment of what is happening. Like all federal employees in the US, I took an oath to the Constitution, not to a president or political party. I should be able to speak out without fear, but the judicial system is slow to react, appears overwhelmed with more important complaints than from one scientist, and perhaps has been compromised.”

• Responding to US executive orders and Trump 2.0: ideological language bans and attempts to suppress science will not obscure the tobacco epidemic’s foundations of exploitation and inequity. “The second Trump administration in the USA is going beyond even the most pessimistic fears of many in the global health community. Chaos has been the defining characteristic of its early weeks, with savage cuts to health research, agencies and programmes; attempts to prevent, retract or amend scientific publications; deletion of health databases; and orders against language and priorities deemed unpalatably ‘woke’. Together with the US withdrawal from the WHO and the dismantling of USAID (US Agency for International Development), the tobacco control and wider public health landscape in the USA and globally has changed dramatically and with shocking rapidity.”

The Week of April 1, 2025

Some folks call this the “April Fool’s Day Massacre” because so many jobs were lost that day. Below are some pieces talking about that day.

• FDA Tobacco Head Brian King Among Casualties of Mass HHS Layoffs. “King showed signs of softening at times. He coauthored a commentary in 2023, for instance, which acknowledged the problem of adults who smoke misperceiving the relative risks of vapes and cigarettes…”

• Thoughts on the Staff Cuts at the Center for Tobacco Products. “When you spend a career in a particular industry, it can become difficult to separate the personal from the professional. Seismic changes don’t just impact policy structures and business models, they change the lives of real people, many of whom you hold in high regard.”

• CDC's Office of Smoking and Health Eliminated. “OSH is housed within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, which had several divisions and branches on the chopping block, according to lists provided to MedPage Today by CDC employees. That included the division of reproductive health and the division of population health.”

• Shaping Vaping April 3. (Podcast) Jim McCarthy and Joe Gitchell discuss the reduction in force at the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and the SCOTUS ruling on the Wages and White Lion case (Triton).

• A few thoughts on this week’s events. “I’ve been through unexpected job changes and would not wish that on anyone. During one of these transitions, I nearly lost all faith in myself. Do whatever you can to guard against that. Love your families. Take pride in your personal and professional stories. Stay connected with one another. Network with anyone and everyone who can help get you to your next stage.”

• Smoking was already becoming 'cool' again. Then, Trump ousted the FDA's tobacco chief. “Will Trump's cuts to the FDA and CDC cause more people to relax their view of smoking? As smoking becomes cool again, will decades of anti-tobacco activism be undone?

  It's hard to say − but so far, Mahajan says, the future doesn't look promising.

  "It really is devastating, because we've been spending a lot of time − not only lung doctors, but again, the American Lung Association and a number of other organizations − trying to squash this idea that smoking is something that's worth doing and worth the risk," he says. "It almost feels like we're starting all over again."

• “Early this morning many people at the primary regulator for my industry, the US FDA Center for Tobacco Products (“CTP”) lost their jobs or were offered exit incentivizing reassignment.
  I’ve come across many comments and statements that seem to not recognize the human element: this morning hard working people who are parents, caregivers, and everything in between had their lives upturned. Many of these folks chose to forego more financially lucrative opportunities to persue a career in public service. If you are one of those people, thank you for your service.”

• “It is not yet clear what all of this means. One possibility is that these dramatic changes are intended to pave the way for a full reset on the part of new leadership – allowing a new Director to hit the ground running with their own team.
  Another possibility is that this is a first step toward an effective shuttering of CTP. And, no doubt, there are possibilities in the middle.”

• Dam Breaks | King Ousted & SCOTUS Balks | RegWatch. (Video) “Joining RegWatch to break down the implications of both King’s ouster and the SCOTUS decision is Jim McCarthy, President of Counterpoint Strategies and lead communications advisor to the American Vapor Manufacturers (AVM).”

• Dismantling the FDA’s Tobacco Office Marks a New Beginning. “The Trump administration has taken decisive action, but it must ensure that this move is followed by a coherent and science-based approach to tobacco regulation, one that prioritizes harm reduction over bureaucratic inertia and misinformation.”

• FDA Tobacco Official is Removed from Post – How It Could Affect You in 2025. “Why Was the FDA Tobacco Official Removed?

  While the FDA has not released full details, internal sources suggest King was placed on administrative leave and effectively removed due to:

  • Internal restructuring and layoffs

  • Political pressure from tobacco-friendly lobbyists

  • A shift in regulatory priorities under the new administration

  For many, the removal of such a key figure raises red flags about the agency’s future direction.” (NOTE: This is the only source I found making some of these claims. It comes from the blog of a home health care service that is claiming that vaping causes popcorn lung.)

But…

Is there more to the story? Inconsistent information is flooding the headlines.

• FDA Looking to Take Back Mistakes in Mass Firings. “The apparent presumption is that they can find desperate individuals will put up with any abuse.”

• 'We'll make mistakes' says RFK as fired US health staff asked to return. "Personnel that should not have been cut, were cut. We're reinstating them. And that was always the plan", he said, adding "we'll make mistakes".

• RFK Jr. said HHS would rehire thousands of fired workers. That wasn’t true. “HHS has no intention of reinstating any significant number of the staffers fired as part of a mass reduction-in-force on Tuesday, despite Kennedy’s assertion that some had been mistakenly cut, a person familiar with the department’s plans told POLITICO.”

• RFK Jr. Is Out for Revenge. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is finally getting his wish of sucker-punching the federal health agencies. This week, Kennedy began the process of firing some 10,000 employees working under the Health and Human Services umbrella. Even before he took office, Kennedy warned health officials that they should pack their bags, and on Tuesday, he defended the cuts: “What we’ve been doing isn’t working,” Kennedy posted on X. He is focused on “realigning HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.” But instead of improving how the federal health bureaucracy works, RFK Jr. is throwing his agencies into chaos.” (paywalled)

• Surprise! White House asks for ‘permanent’ block on NIH’s sudden indirect cost cap. “Is the U.S. government quitting on an attempt to cap the National Institutes of Health's “indirect” costs or just moving the fight to a different stage? Today the Trump administration asked U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley to convert her 5 March preliminary injunction on the attempted cap to a permanent injunction. A coalition of 22 states, university associations, and research advocacy groups had gone to Kelley to stop NIH from implementing its 7 February notice to reduce indirect cost rates to a flat 15%, a change that would have meant billions of dollars less each year to institutions receiving NIH grants.”

• Federal judge issues permanent injunction on Trump cuts to research overhead payments. “The order, supported by both sides, sets up next legal battle over NIH contracts” (paywalled)

• US Supreme Court largely backs FDA's denial of flavored vape product applications. “Wednesday's ruling left unresolved the question of how harmful it was to the companies that the FDA failed to consider their proposed plans to restrict underage access and use of their products, and ordered the lower court to reassess that issue under a different legal standard.”

• Supreme Court Referenced Global Action Brief in E-Cigarette Ruling | Cliff Douglas. “Specifically, the Court cited Global Action’s explanation of the relative risks of combustible cigarettes and e-cigarettes, as well as the scientific literature it gathered on the topic.”

• Nicholas Bagley (Thread on X) “There's a fascinating -- and very rare! -- discussion of the APA's rule of prejudicial error in the Supreme Court's decision this morning in the vaping case…”

• Judge rules in favor of Utah’s measures against youth vaping. “The plaintiffs argued in their lawsuit that the program violated their Fourth Amendment right by mirroring an unreasonable search and potential seizure of their products.

  Barlow pointed out that the Legislature would have passed the bill regardless of whether an inspection program was in place, adding that “these provisions are operable without the Inspection Program, as they provide a comprehensive program for regulating electronic cigarettes and punishing retailers that sell banned products.”

• Altria Stops Selling NJOY Ace E-Cigarettes in Patent Dispute With Juul. “Among the NJOY products removed from the market is the only menthol vaping product authorized for sale in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration. Altria Chief Executive Billy Gifford, on a January conference call with analysts, said the ITC's decision limits consumers' choices and "undermines public health, especially in context of a market that is overrun by illicit products."

Parting thoughts from the perspective of someone who likes to use nicotine…

I’ll never go back to smoking. I have no desire to stop using nicotine. I hate tobacco flavored vapes. Here in Minnesota, JUUL pods are ridiculously expensive. When I’m vaping an authorized product, I vape menthol NJOY Ace. When I’m traveling, I vape JUUL menthol for the convenience of how small the device is.

I have a stockpile of NJOY pods, which are still available in my local stores. When those are gone, I will do what makes industry people and regulators cringe: buy affordable, unauthorized products. If you have a problem with that, please join the efforts to revamp our regulatory process so more flavored products can be sold legally in the US.

Lobbying at the state level for “ban harder” policies won’t stop me. It is a waste of lobbying funds. Please, take it to DC and fix the system. The lives of millions of people are counting on you.

I won’t vape tobacco flavors. The authorized ones are gross to my palate. I’d rather smoke.

Until next time…