A former tobacco industry executive has been appointed to senior leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alarming public health advocates and critics of the industry’s influence over government.
Stephen Sayle, who was named CDC’s deputy director for legislative affairs in March, previously worked at Fontem Ventures, a subsidiary of British multinational tobacco company Imperial Brands. From 2017 to 2018, he served as vice president of U.S. operations for Fontem, a company focused on non-combustible tobacco products, including the e-cigarette brand Blue and the oral nicotine pouch brand Zone.
From a public health perspective, appointing a former tobacco executive to a senior CDC position is “unprecedented,” said Timothy McAfee, director of the CDC’s Office of Smoking and Health from 2010 to 2017, in an editorial published this week in the journal Tobacco Control. McAfee told STAT that Sayle’s appointment is also “totally inconsistent” with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s previous promise to “close the revolving door” between industry and government.
Regardless of whether you agree with President Kennedy’s comments about the relative safety of oral nicotine pouches, McAfee said in an email, “It is 100% clear that no former tobacco industry executive working within the nation’s public health agency wants to influence policy adoption.”
HHS cited Seil’s legislative experience. “Mr. Sayle has more than 25 years of experience working at senior levels in the federal government and will be a valuable asset to CDC in ensuring effective coordination with Congress,” Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon told STAT in an email. “Like all HHS employees, he must comply with all applicable ethics laws and regulations.”
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Seil did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kelsey Romeo-Stappy, chief attorney for the anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health, said the news adds to concerns about the tobacco industry’s political influence under the current administration.
“Federal regulation of tobacco in the United States was abolished under the Trump administration,” Romeo Stappy said, noting that the CDC’s Office of Smoking and Health Services was closed last year. “This is just another step in the direction of failing to protect Americans from the harms of tobacco and actually going in the opposite direction.”
The Trump administration has so far scrapped plans to ban menthol cigarettes and taken a more favorable stance toward flavored e-cigarettes. Trump pledged to “save vaping” during his presidential campaign, and Kennedy supports vaping as a harm reduction strategy. “E-cigarettes reduce cigarette smoking, but it’s worse,” he said at a Congressional hearing last week. (Many tobacco researchers support e-cigarettes as a tool for quitting smoking and lowering cancer risk, even though they point out the potential health risks of e-cigarettes.)
Meanwhile, Altria Group and Reynolds American both donated to Trump’s White House ballroom renovation, and Reynolds also donated $10 million to Trump’s super PAC for the 2024 election. Susie Wiles, President Trump’s chief of staff, is a former lobbyist for the tobacco company Swisher International.
Mr Sayle has previously been criticized for potential conflicts of interest during his time in government. After lobbying for Chevron and other energy companies, he served as staff director for the Energy Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology from 2013 to 2015.
“It’s hard to think of a more nihilistic and disturbing message to send to someone who has dedicated much of his career to maximizing the consumption of inherently unhealthy products than reversing some aspect of public health policy,” Jeff Hauser, executive director of the watchdog group The Revolving Door Project, said in an email.
The public health impact of Sayle’s appointment extends beyond tobacco, Hauser said. “Those who have shown an eagerness to rationalize the interests of tobacco corporate profits over public health are likely to be weak on all sorts of other issues where profits and health are contested.”
Former CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald resigned from her role in 2018 after Politico reported that she had bought tobacco stocks, which she claimed were bought without her investment manager’s knowledge.
Health Department officials said Mr. Sale does not own any shares in Imperial or have any other investments in tobacco companies. But McAfee, a former Occupational Safety and Health Secretary and now a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, noted that Sayle’s quiet appointment to the CDC stands in stark contrast to the controversy surrounding Fitzgerald.
This spring, Sayle’s former employer, Fontem US, filed a lawsuit against the FDA, Kennedy, and FDA Commissioner Marty McCulley, alleging that the agency illegally withheld its application for marketing authorization for Zone oral nicotine pouches. Fontem and Imperial’s other U.S. subsidiary, ITG Brands, have a history of aggressive lobbying on e-cigarette regulation and other issues.
Mr. McAfee recalled Mr. Kennedy’s frequent complaints about industry influence over federal health agencies. Sayle’s appointment to the CDC “opens a door that has been closed for decades and lets the fox into the henhouse with open arms,” he said.
Helen Branswell contributed reporting.
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