US FDA commissioner to step down next month

The commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, Margaret A. Hamburg, is to step down by the end of March.

In a letter to her colleagues at the agency, Hamburg said that together they had made significant progress in implementing both the letter and spirit of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

‘Our tobacco compliance and enforcement program has entered into agreements with numerous state and local authorities to enforce the ban on the sale of tobacco products to children and teens; conducted close to 240,000 inspections; written more than 12,100 warning letters to retailers; proposed the extremely important foundational “deeming” rule; and broken new ground for FDA with the launch of the Agency’s first public education campaigns to prevent and reduce tobacco use among our nation’s youth,’ she said in part.