The FDA also introduced stricter age-verification requirements for online sales of e-cigarettes. The proposal is at the White House Office of Management and Budget for review.
Mr. Gottlieb is a conservative physician and former deputy FDA commissioner under Republican President George W. Bush. Before becoming head of the FDA, he was a longtime healthcare investor and consultant who sat on multiple company boards. He surprised critics who worried about his ties to the pharmaceutical industry by speaking out about rising drug prices and drug companies’ tactics to keep competitors off the market.
Mr. Gottlieb also sought to introduce the FDA into the drug pricing conversation, an unusual move for the agency, which typically oversees clinical trials and drug approvals. He often touted that the agency had approved more than 1,000 generic drugs as evidence that it was helping to curb prescription drug prices, a top priority of Trump’s administration.
In January, Gottlieb said in a tweet that he did not plan to leave the agency after speculation that he planned to step down. “We’ve got a lot of important policy we’ll advance this year,” he wrote in the January tweet.
