VA Health Chief to Lead Tobacco Center

New FDA Division Will Oversee Efforts to Regulate Products

The Obama administration on Wednesday named a longtime public health expert with deep roots in the fight against AIDS to lead the Food and Drug Administration's efforts to curb deaths from tobacco.

Lawrence Deyton will become the first director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, created as part of a law that grants the agency sweeping power to regulate the addictive substance. Congress adopted the legislation two months ago, after more than a decade of battles on Capitol Hill and in courts.

The measure gives the FDA the authority to set rules on the amount of nicotine allowed in cigarettes and other tobacco products -- which contribute to an estimated one in five deaths in the United States -- and to regulate their packaging and marketing.

The law requires greater disclosure of ingredients and more graphic warnings of tobacco's health risks. It prohibits certain flavorings and advertising intended to appeal to young people. It does not allow the agency to ban nicotine.

The center that will oversee these efforts opened Wednesday, FDA officials said, and Deyton will begin work next month.

Deyton, 57, is a physician who has worked for more than two decades in other influential federal roles affecting public health. Most recently, he has been the chief public health officer for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

In the late 1970s, Deyton was a founder of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, which would, when the AIDS epidemic arrived a few years later, become Washington's hub for treatment for people with HIV and AIDS. By the late 1980s, when drugs to treat the virus became available, Deyton moved to the National Institutes of Health, where he established community programs for clinical research on AIDS within the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

In 1998, he became director of the AIDS service for the VA health system, at the time the largest provider of care in the country for HIV-infected patients. Four years later, he became director of a broader public health group within the VA that oversaw programs aimed at hepatitis C, bioterrorism, possible flu pandemic and tobacco use, as well as HIV.

Deyton became the VA's chief health officer three years ago. He was in the news in March, when he told a House committee exploring the controversy over symptoms and illnesses incurred during the Persian Gulf War that he did not believe that, despite years of research, a "new or unique syndrome has been identified."

Deyton said in a statement Wednesday that the work of the tobacco center fits within the Obama administration's goals for changing health care: "Effective health reform as articulated by President Obama depends in large part on promoting healthier lifestyles."

Deyton also said that the success of the FDA's efforts to lessen Americans' use of tobacco products "will depend on our ability to engage our public health partners inside and outside the government."