Public Health and Power: A Toxicologist's Story

Agents of the Current Thinking is a first-hand account of wrongdoing at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, our federal agency tasked with protecting our public health.

In 2009, Tobacco Control Act extended its purview to tobacco products. Then in 2019, scientists at its Center for Tobacco Products were directed to "eyeball" data, and leadership retaliated when they objected. In 2022, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel disclosed that wrongdoing and the agency was supposed to, but didn’t, self-correct. Instead, it continued unscientific, uninformed, and misleading arguments in its role to regulate tobacco products.

In 2025, scientists still faced retaliation, complicit leadership said, “for asking too many questions” while trying to follow the law. So, despite increasing concerns about the health effects of microplastics, the FDA allowed the first sale of oral pouch products containing nicotine without knowing or considering what those pouches were made of.

The FDA is granted a broad authority to choose how it enforces the law, exercising enforcement discretion to exclude itself from its own policies that govern scientific integrity. That unchecked freedom, under conflicting agendas and performative oversight, has allowed the agency to stray from its mission, with leadership that enforce an unwritten current thinking to support predetermined decisions to deny or allow the sale of tobacco products in the United States.

This is the story of a regulatory agency misaligned with its mission, mandates, and messaging, where superficial oversight has created a U.S. tobacco market that is effectively unregulated.

Christy Leppanen, Ph.D., is an environmental scientist with experience where statutes governing biological, physical, and chemical contaminants are applied. From 2021 to 2025, she was the first microplastic pollution subject matter expert at the Center for Tobacco Products. She was hired to support the agency’s compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Tobacco Control Act, and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

Dr. Leppanen was an Associate Editor of the journal Biological Invasions, and her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and the University of Washington’s Helen R. Whiteley Center. She holds a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry and an M.S. in Biology from the University of Memphis and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Maine. She has worked with NGOs, with state, territorial, and federal governments, with international efforts, and taught and published in environmental toxicology, entomology, invasion biology, and conservation science.

She also wrote the 2014 Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner for Horror, Bulletin of ZOMBIE Research: Volume 1, that was awarded the Kirkus Star. She is from northern Minnesota and lives in downtown Saint Paul.

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