| Section | Link to Section |
|---|---|
| Public Health | A Background In Public Health With No Evidence Of Vaping |
| Tobacco Issues | Tobacco Issues Are Avoided By Most CDC directors. |
Several news sources state that President Biden will name Mandy Cohen, a former health secretary for North Carolina, to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The formal declaration might be made the following week.
After Rochelle Walensky, the current director of the CDC, departs on June 30, Cohen will take over. The CDC director is not subject to Senate confirmation, in contrast to the FDA commissioner.
A Background In Public Health With No Evidence Of Vaping
From 2017 until 2022, Cohen was the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. He then left to seek a position in the private sector. Prior to that, she served in the Obama administration as the chief operating officer and chief of staff of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where she made connections with a number of individuals who are currently a member of the Biden healthcare team. She had previously worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs on healthcare-related matters. She is a medical professional with training in internal medicine.
Resigning CDC Director Walensky faced criticism for the agency's COVID response, including transferring direction to states and letting political influence dictate choices. Walensky had no prior expertise in public health administration. She has been leading the agency's reorganization for the past year to expedite future responses to epidemics.
It appears that Cohen has not previously expressed any opinions regarding vaping as a damage-reduction tactic. She did advise against vaping in the early stages of the COVID pandemic and in favor of quitting smoking. Cohen, like Walensky before her, is likely to permit the CDC's tobacco division to function without close supervision.
Tobacco Issues Are Avoided By Most CDC directors.
The CDC has a significant impact on the process even though it does not establish administration policies for nicotine or tobacco products. The National Health Interview Survey and the combined CDC-FDA National Youth Tobacco Survey are two of the agency's studies that track changes in smoking and vaping trends that have an impact on policy planning. Many of the Surgeon General's messages on vaping and smoking have been researched and authored by the CDC Office on Smoking and Health, which has also recently worked to promote the talking points of anti-vaping tobacco control groups.
Directors of the CDC have, for the most part, avoided getting involved in the organization's tobacco and e-cigarette activity. At least one catastrophic result of this has been that agency anti-vaping idealogues have been able to control communications during the CDC's response to a 2019 outbreak of lung ailments brought on by THC oil obtained illegally and mixed with vitamin E acetate, according to CDC Director Robert Redfield.
The term "e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI)" was coined by the CDC to suggest that the injuries may have been caused by nicotine vapes, or e-cigarettes. In actuality, none of the thousands of "EVALI" cases—which resulted in roughly 3,000 hospital admissions and 68 documented deaths—were connected to any nicotine product. Brian King, an official with the Office on Smoking and Health, is credited with coming up with the moniker "EVALI." King went on to lead the FDA Center for Tobacco Products.
The agency never recanted its assertion that nicotine products could not be ruled out as a contributing factor, and neither Rochelle Walensky, Biden's appointee, nor Redfield would overrule subordinates who refused to acknowledge the CDC's involvement in spreading the pandemic or label the illness. Researchers requested that Walensky modify the name "EVALI," but she didn't even reply. Instead, she gave the CDC's "EVALI Incident Manager," who had handled the case badly in the first place, the agency's response.
Obama appointment Tom Frieden, the former head of the CDC, used his position to criticize vaping, even disregarding a sharp reduction in teen smoking in favor of inciting concerns about e-cigarettes. Frieden, who initially gained notoriety under former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg as New York City Health Commissioner, currently serves as the director of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative supported by Bloomberg.
