Search This Blog

Sunday, February 10, 2019

FOIA, Nicotine & FDA Webmaster

Back on November 18th, 2018 I filed another FDA FOIA request (see this link) requesting information on why pages on the FDA website regarding the "addictiveness" of nicotine were removed.

A few weeks ago I received the following email (in part):

"... My supervisor and I met with the web posting team on Tuesday to investigate how, why, and when items were changed on the consumer updates pages, I also met with the original author of the page in question. As I suspected, the items are removed based upon how old they are, whether they are visited regularly, and whether they are about something current, as they age, they are removed. In this case we’re dealing with a 2013-2015 decision; thus, the consumer update was quite old and out of date.

The people who manage what is posted on those pages do not work for the Center for Tobacco Products, they are a centralized web team working for the entire agency. Unfortunately, their process is not captured by regulation or policy. It is purely administrative and therefore without any germane documentary evidence that we could provide. ..."

Looking at the first paragraph it's interesting to note that the topic of how addictive nicotine might be is not of interest currently.

The webmaster at FDA would seem to control what everyday vaperatti, shop owners and vaper think through the use web page statistics.

It's truly amazing the coincidence of the "teen vaping epidemic" and the lack of interest in an FDA web page indicating "... that although any nicotine-containing product is potentially addictive, decades of research and use have shown that NRT products sold OTC do not appear to have significant potential for abuse or dependence.  ..." (see archived page here).

Interesting that the "rest of us" are forced to use this website for "guidance" when the content is controlled by a "webmaster" and not a "regulator." 

No comments:

Post a Comment