FDA Names Four New Tobacco Advisory Committee Members, Including Harm Reduction Advocate Skip Murray

The Food and Drug Administration has named four new voting members to its Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, TPSAC, the body that advises the agency on the science behind its decisions on tobacco and nicotine products.

Among the four is Skip Murray, a tobacco harm reduction advocate, who takes his place as the committee's public representative, the role that sits on the committee to speak for consumers rather than for a profession. Murray is a known figure in the policy debate on regulated alternatives to smoking, and his presence on the committee is one of the points the appointment is being read on.

The appointments follow the expiration of the terms of members who served on the committee previously, and the new four are filling the open seats on a body that advises the agency across the full range of products it oversees, from combustible tobacco to e-cigarettes and, increasingly, the newer pouch-format products. The committee's remit includes reviewing the safety risks of nicotine pouches and other novel nicotine products, and the mix of new expertise on the panel will shape how those reviews are approached.

The new members are expected to bring depth in the fields the agency has said it is looking for, across scientific disciplines that bear on how nicotine products are assessed, and the public representative seat makes the panel a mix of professional expertise and consumer perspective, which is the composition the Federal Advisory Committee Act requires.

The appointments put a fresh balance of members on a committee that will hear the agency's next set of product reviews, and the fact that the public seat went to a named harm reduction advocate signals how the agency is reading the composition of the panel it wants for the issues ahead.