TPSAC – The Snus & Tobacco Inquisitors

This month the FDA announced the members of its Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC). I thought it would be interesting to discover who are the people which will have a major hand in deciding the fate or future of tobacco products. The following is an hours worth of Google research. There is more, but this will give you an idea of where the 9 voting members of the TPSAC stand. Or more correctly who they stand with.

Meet the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee: with “friends” like this…..

A quote from the pages I found on each member, with links.

Jonathan M. Samet: “has been an anti-smoking activist since the Fifth World Conference on Smoking and Health in 1983. He was one of three “consulting scientific editors” and “prepared draft chapters or portions” of the 1986 Surgeon General Report.”

Neal L. Benowitz: professor and chief of the division of clinical pharmacology and biopharmaceutical sciences at the University of California at San Francisco.
Mr. Benowitz seems to be the least known or talked about. I’m not sure if this is an example of a cover up or not.  Interestingly enough, he also appears to involved in the medical marijuana debate too.

Mark S. Clanton: former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute and current chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society’s High Plains Division, has been appointed by the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to serve as a voting member of the new Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee.

Gregory N. Connolly: has directed the Massachusetts Department of Public Health efforts to curb smoking since 1986.

Karen L. DeLeeuw: Director of the Center for Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention at Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment

Dorothy K. Hatsukami: has conducted research in the areas of nicotine addiction and treatment of nicotine addiction among a general population of adult smokers as well as adolescents. She has also conducted research in the area of smokeless tobacco. She is currently a Principal Investigator of one of the seven NIH-funded Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers (TTURC).

Patricia Nez Henderson: “The Tobacco Industry????  Remember, this is an industry that has LIED to us for many years.  This is an industry that will now be monitored closely by the Federal Drug Administration, because they continue to produce products that are deadly and spread information to the general public that is erroneous.”

Jack E. Henningfield : continues to serve as advisor and consultant to various departments of the U.S. Federal Government, the World Health Organization, and other organizations that address issues of tobacco, drug addiction and health.

Melanie Wakefield: has extensive experience in evaluating tobacco control policies and programmes. She is VicHealth Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer at the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria in Australia.

I am intentionally not printing much of my thoughts here. I am merely giving a heads up as to who the people on the panel are. Please do some more research on your own. We must watch these people for bias.

Stockpiling Snus and Snuff,

MICK HELLWIG

WHAT I THINK at SnusCENTRAL.org