FDA Reform

* Your July 3 article, “GOP Wins Spell Brighter Days for Tobacco Firms,” implies that those groups working to reform the Food and Drug Administration, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, are simply fronts for the tobacco industry.

The implication that our substantial criticism of the FDA has only been “since January” is unfounded. CEI has been advocating FDA reform since 1987. We received no money from tobacco companies until 1990. As for our “expensive mass media campaigns,” our entire budget for producing and broadcasting a radio and a TV ad came to less than $40,000.

The theme of those ads is the same theme that has run through all of CEI’s work on FDA reform over the past eight years: If the government approves a drug which will start saving lives tomorrow, then how many people died yesterday waiting for the government to act? This is a significant human cost of FDA regulation which has been, until recently, overlooked by both Congress and the media.

JULIE C. DeFALCO, Policy Analyst

CEI, Washington