The tobacco industry could be the beneficiary of health agency cuts

The Trump administration has made drastic job cuts across several federal health agencies. Among those cuts are offices dedicated to preventing smoking and tobacco addiction. And without federal programs to stop tobacco use, addiction rates could climb and worsen the existing public health crisis.

Why are anti-tobacco initiatives at risk?

Amid the Trump administration's slashing of federal agencies, the Department of Health and Human Services took a massive hit. One of the casualties was the Office on Smoking and Health, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The office was responsible for the "projects aimed at spotting trends in tobacco use and preventing it at the national and state levels," said Stat News. At this point, the OSH is "effectively shuttered," with the "roughly 120 full-time employees who worked there dismissed along with the contractors who lost their jobs in February."

The OSH cuts are the "greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century," said Tim McAfee, the head of the division from 2010 to 2017, to Stat News. One of the greatest successes of the office was the "Tips from Former Smokers" ad campaign. A 2025 study found the program significantly increased the number of calls to tobacco quit lines between 2012 and 2023.

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"If we take our foot off the gas, what do we think will happen?" a CDC employee fired from OSH said to NBC News. "Tobacco use rates will increase among youth, and fewer adults will quit. Because of that, people will die." Several states' tobacco prevention programs are funded by the CDC, putting those initiatives at risk too.

Along with OSH, the Food and Drug Administration's chief tobacco regulator, Brian King, was also placed on leave. The FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, responsible for overseeing warning labels and restrictions on the marketing of tobacco products, had dozens of its staff members dismissed as well.

Did the tobacco industry play a role?

The top corporate donor to President Donald Trump's main super PAC was a "subsidiary of Reynolds American, the second-largest tobacco company in the United States and the maker of Newports, the No. 1 menthol brand in the country," said The Washington Post. For a long time, tobacco and vaping companies have claimed that the FDA has been "too slow to approve newer products for adult smokers, including e-cigarettes, that generally carry much lower risks than traditional cigarettes," said The Associated Press. "Under King, the FDA rejected applications for millions of flavored e-cigarettes, citing insufficient data that the products would help adult smokers."

What lies ahead?

Even with health agencies' efforts, cigarette smoking "remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death" in the U.S., said the CDC. It kills more than 480,000 Americans each year. Without federal support, experts worry that progress toward preventing smoking will not just stall, but potentially reverse.

While previous efforts to curb smoking have been successful, a new threat has emerged. According to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the number of adults in the U.S. who exclusively smoked cigarettes decreased by 6.8 million between 2017 and 2023. However, approximately 7.2 million adults started exclusively using e-cigarettes instead.

The risk is especially high among youth and teenagers. "It's inexplicable and especially harmful that these cuts are coming at a time when the FDA should be redoubling its enforcement efforts against the many illegal flavored e-cigarette products that have entered our country from overseas and put kids at risk," said Yolonda C. Richardson, the president and CEO of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, in a statement.