Keith Gossett

Donald Trump has been President for 40 minutes and he has not yet saved Flavored Vaping.

Huge victory for vaping in the 5th Circuit. The opinion appears to be a blistering rebuke of @FDATobacco. Stay tuned for more. vaping.org/wp-content/upl…

Let’s wrap by applauding the integrity and courage of these FDA staff members. It takes real guts to speak out like this and here’s hoping they continue to stand tall.

Some people say AVM has been too tough on FDA. But does it still seem “hyperbolic” when we say the agency is rigging the process and is riddled with political influence? Even the agency’s own people can’t engage in a meaningful, constructive dialogue with their own colleagues!

These whistleblowers are obviously keen to share their stories and their insight – but apparently no one in the national news media wants to hear it. Those outlets quote unnamed officials at federal agencies all the time. But here? No curiosity, zero effort.

We know why NPR, STAT, TBIJ, and Bloomberg haven’t done it – it’s because they are on the prohibition payroll, taking outright cash payments from billionaires that are engineering the political influence. They condone this corruption and they sold out the public.

Why is it left to vaping advocates like us to bring this story to light? Why haven’t reporters at NYT, AP, WashPost, CBS, or Reuters tried to cultivate these sources and tell the American public what’s really going on inside that broken agency?

This deserves to be a major scandal and FDA leadership ought to be truly ashamed. It’s a total disgrace. But the FDA beat writers in the national press have done next to nothing to expose this corruption.

Those personnel also point out that FDA is doing most of this in the absence of formal rulemaking – that is to say, unlawfully. Again, political pressure preventing that.

Here’s another and read it closely. Because of political pressure, FDA leadership is *altering* the scientific findings of its own staff and reversing their decisions.

What happens when the reviewers concur with an application?

Infuriating.

I guess when Senator Durbin or Matt Myers calls the head honcho with their latest demands, ya gotta hop to it.

Of course, those personnel are forbidden from dialogue with actual stakeholders. Memo to FDA: you can’t catch Covid over Zoom.

Leadership at FDA has violated their duty to the American public. This is the appalling culture that Mitch Zeller, Brian King, and Robert Califf have created:

Those who have tried to speak out internally are swiftly penalized or have their careers derailed.

Yep.

They are proposing fixes to the system but FDA leadership doesn’t care.

They also know the agency’s corrupt approach is causing active public health harm but, again, no one will listen to them.

They know they system is rigged but there’s nothing they can do.