During his yearlong tenure leading the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary managed to bother various constituencies, including pharmaceutical companies and anti-abortion activists, but it was fruit-flavored vapes that apparently sealed his fate.
Tobacco industry executives and lobbyists leaned on Donald Trump and his team to expand access to the flavored vaping products to consumers 21 and older, a move that Makary had been slow to approve. By some accounts, the president, convinced that young MAGA voters care about the issue, ended up personally “upbraiding” the FDA commissioner on the matter.
The agency ultimately did what the White House wanted and authorized the fruit-flavored vapes, soon after Trump’s intervention, but the damage to Makary’s role at the FDA proved too much. He and the administration parted ways days later.
As it turns out, however, he wasn’t the only one to exit as a result of the fight. The New York Times reported:
The chief spokesman for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. resigned on Wednesday in protest over the administration’s push to allow major tobacco companies to begin selling flavored vapes that appeal to children. His departure came one day after the head of the Food and Drug Administration quit for the same reason.
In a letter to Mr. Trump, obtained by The New York Times, the spokesman, Rich Danker, did not blame the president. … But he warned that authorizing flavored e-cigarettes would draw more children into vaping and increase their risk for a number of health issues, from addiction to cancer.
The Times’ report added that Danker is the second assistant secretary for public affairs to quit during Kennedy’s tenure: The first, Thomas Corry, resigned last year, in part to protest the secretary’s handling of a measles outbreak in Texas.
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A resignation from a leading Health and Human Services official is notable in its own right, but it’s also worth appreciating just how many other vacancies the department is dealing with right now.
As things stand, HHS is currently without a Senate-approved:
- FDA commissioner
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director
- surgeon general
- Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research director
While we’re at it, the CDC’s principal deputy director also recently resigned, as did Kennedy’s choice to help lead the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
The list of problems at Kennedy’s HHS could fill a lengthy book, but his personnel problems are among the most endemic.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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