FDA announces new step in comprehensive plan to address nicotine

Posted on: 12/6/17

As the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., tobacco causes more than 480,000 deaths every year. To address this devastation, earlier this year FDA announced a new regulatory plan to lower this burden of tobacco-related disease and death. The plan takes a comprehensive approach to nicotine and tobacco, including an initiative to lower nicotine in cigarettes to minimally addictive or non-addictive levels. Aimed at shifting the trajectory of tobacco-related disease and death, the agency’s approach recognizes that nicotine is delivered through products posing a continuum of risk. This ranges from combusted cigarettes at one end, to nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products – designed to safely reduce withdrawal symptoms, including nicotine craving, associated with quitting smoking – at the other.

Recently, the FDA announced an additional step in this comprehensive approach, announcing the formation of a new Nicotine Steering Committee that will be charged with re-evaluating and modernizing FDA’s approach to development and regulation of nicotine replacement therapy products that help smokers quit. To read more about this approach in a blog written by FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, and others, click here.