The US FDA is asking some recently laid-off staff to return to work until their official termination date on June 2, with no plans to rehire them after that. Photo credit: FDA
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)recently laid off dozens of employees responsible for cracking down on retailers that sell tobacco to underage customers — and now it is asking them to come back, Politico reported.
Senior officials at the agency have reached out to former staffers in recent days, urging them to temporarily return and help resume enforcement efforts that stalled after a wave of terminations. According to four federal health officials who spoke with Politico, the layoffs gutted FDA’s ability to penalize stores that violate the federal minimum age requirement for tobacco sales.
The disruption followed an order from Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to cut around 10,000 positions across the department, including the entire team in FDA’s tobacco enforcement office. That office handled civil penalties for retailers caught selling cigarettes and vaping products to people under 21.
The remaining staff scrambled to delay pending complaints and preserve cases headed for review by the HHS board. Inside the agency, many expressed concern that the cuts would make it easier for retailers to flout the law with little fear of consequences.
“It’s a prescription for allowing retailers to roll the dice and sell to minors with less concern that they will ever be caught,” said Mitch Zeller, who ran FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products for nearly 10 years before stepping down in 2022. “Everybody agrees that retailers should not sell to minors — it doesn’t get any more red, white, and blue than this program.”
While FDA leadership has not released a long-term plan, they have been working to temporarily patch the gap. They asked laid-off staff to return from administrative leave and support enforcement efforts until their official termination date on June 2. More than two dozen have agreed to come back, one official said, adding that some feared they could lose severance if they refused.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon confirmed that laid-off workers might be called in for temporary service through early June. “This decision is focused on ensuring that the transition is as seamless as possible, minimizing any disruption to the agency’s mission and operations,” Nixon said in a statement to Politico. “HHS fully supports this approach, which aims to maintain public health services while managing the reorganization process effectively.”
Inside FDA, some officials are still pushing to fully reinstate the tobacco enforcement office. Others, however, have warned returning staffers that they likely will not be rehired once June 2 passes. “There was no workforce planning in advance of this,” one official said. “There was no continuity planning.”
CTP is funded entirely through user fees from the tobacco industry, so cutting its staff would not reduce federal spending. In fact, according to officials cited by Politico, it could actually increase costs, since fines collected from retailers go straight to the US Treasury.
Kennedy, who has described smoking as especially harmful to Americans’ health, defended the cuts in a recent CBS News interview. He said the layoffs targeted administrative or duplicate roles.
“In some cases, we cut programs, but we only did that when we consolidated them into another program,” he said. “So the task will continue, their mission will continue. The people are still there for the most part.”
FDA officials say recent staffing reductions have significantly disrupted the agency’s standard enforcement process, which typically follows a three-step approach: a warning letter for the first violation, financial penalties for repeat offenses, and a sales ban in the most serious cases. The teams that handle warning letters and enforce bans remain in place, and FDA continues to issue public warnings to retailers. Still, the loss of staff tasked with pursuing civil penalties has created a gap in the middle of the process.