Rocky Road to a Smoke-Free Future
- October 30, 2024
John A. Jenkins, Law Street Media
With cigarette makers battling for market dominance in a “smoke-free future,” legal and marketing battles are raging – and recent Freedom of Information Act requests may signal what’s coming next.
Womble Bond Dickinson, one of several law firms representing tobacco-industry giant Reynolds American, so far this year has logged at least 156 FOIA requests with the Food and Drug Administration – including 71 in September, 39 in August, and 11 in July. Collectively, the requests are an apparent effort to corral a vast trove of documents about how the FDA regulates the $107.5 billion industry in its various segments: cigarettes, e-cigarettes, vaping products, and smokeless tobacco such as chewing tobacco and snuff.
One request from Womble Bond specifically targeted Dr. Brian King, director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. That FOIA request sought “copies of all records of the dates, times, locations, and purpose of all of Brian King’s foreign travels and meetings from July 2022 to present, [and] copies of all records, including meeting memoranda, minutes, lists of attendees, slides, presentations, transcripts, and communications related to all of Brian King’s foreign meetings from July 2022 to present.”
Other Womble Bond FOIA requests during the past two years showed that the law firm is actively tracking tobacco-related requests made by others. For example, Womble Bond logged 11 separate requests to the FDA for Brian King-related documents previously sought by conservative activists at Protect the Public’s Trust and at the libertarian Reason Foundation.