FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) recently announced plans to offer a Tobacco Industry Site Tours Program that would allow “tobacco growers, tobacco warehousers, and tobacco product manufacturers” the opportunity to invite CTP staff to visit facilities involved in the “growing, processing or manufacturing of tobacco.”  The purpose of this program is to allow CTP staff to observe operations in order to “gain firsthand knowledge of industry’s manufacturing processes” and the agency emphasizes that these tours are “educational and not intended to include official FDA inspections of facilities.”  

AWMA contacted the CTP office to point out that this tour program does not include distributors’ facilities and thus does not allow CTP staff to fully understand the tobacco supply chain.  AWMA urged the agency to include distributors in this Tobacco Industry Site Tours Program.  In response to our query, we received a note from the agency indicating that this would be a “good idea” and that they would be proposing including distributors in this program.  AWMA will continue to keep members apprised as this issue develops.