After being heavily criticised, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) tobacco program is to be revamped with changes including a five-year strategic plan to better outline priorities, reports Medical Xpress.

The FDA had come under fire from anti-tobacco advocates, lawmakers and the tobacco industry for its work in cigarette and vaping regulation. The agency struggled to meet deadlines and manage the authorisation of e-cigarettes with an external review calling the FDA “reactive and overwhelmed.”
Now it has said that the new plan will outline efforts on e-cigarettes as well as being more transparent about FDA decisions, such as mass rejection of applications from e-cigarette makers, according to Medical Xpress.
“As we enter this era of declining use of combustible tobacco and continued innovation in the e-cigarette industry, the societal concerns are not subtle,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in an agency news release. “Our ability to keep pace with these changes will depend on immediate, short-term and long-term actions the center is taking that we believe will position the agency to more successfully implement our regulatory oversight of tobacco products.”
Tobacco chief for the agency, Brian King, said that regulators would like to “better communicate” with companies on how FDA decisions are made and noted that the FDA together with the Justice Department has announced several lawsuits and fines in recent months.
“Those are the first of their kind, and I hope they’re a wake-up call to industry that if you are violating the law we are going to use the full portfolio of our enforcement activities to ensure that you comply,” King told the Associated Press.
“Unfortunately, the tobacco industry has fought the agency on many of the science-based actions we’ve taken, putting profits over public health,” he said.