Six months after leaving the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary has broken his silence on the pressure he says he faced from the administration. In remarks to POLITICO on Tuesday, November 10, the former commissioner accused White House and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) aides of putting vape approvals and lobbyists ahead of public health.
Makary added that he had rejected government corruption “every time” he saw it, “just as voters did last week”, a reference to the November midterm elections. According to POLITICO, these are the first comments in which he appears to refer to pressure from the White House during his tenure.
A resignation over flavors
Makary resigned on May 12, 2026, after 13 months in office. A federal health official told NPR at the time that “it came down to the fruit-flavored vape issue.” One week earlier, on May 5, the FDA had authorized four Glas e-liquid pods: Classic Menthol, Fresh Menthol, Gold and Sapphire. Gold is a mango flavor and Sapphire a blueberry flavor, according to the Associated Press. It was the first time the agency authorized e-cigarettes in flavors other than tobacco and menthol.
The FDA justified its decision by the device access restriction technology of the Glas G2, which requires age and identity verification with a government ID, Bluetooth pairing with a smartphone and random biometric check-ins. Three days later, the agency also eased enforcement against some unauthorized vapes still under review.
Internal memos later released by the FDA show that agency scientists had backed several of the flavored pods in February, before a senior official reporting to Makary blocked them, the AP reported in June. The same FDA decision memo found no statistically significant difference in switching between adults using the mango and blueberry pods and those using a tobacco-flavored product.
POLITICO notes that vapes were not the only source of friction. Anti-abortion Republicans criticized Makary for not restricting online prescriptions of mifepristone, drugmakers complained about inconsistent product reviews, and staff complained about poor management.
Not the first to speak out
Makary is not the first official to link the vape decision to people inside the administration. The day after his resignation, HHS’s top spokesperson, Rich Danker, resigned in protest. In his letter to President Trump, he blamed unnamed “senior HHS officials” for the flavor policy shift, without blaming the president himself.
Makary’s latest remarks also came days after Calley Means, a former senior adviser to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., went public with similar accusations. On The Joe Rogan Experience and on CBS’s Face the Nation, Means alleged that former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and other aides pressed HHS and the FDA to create a pathway for fruit-flavored vapes, following lobbying by tobacco interests linked to the firm Ballard Partners, Newsweek reported. Wiles and her former deputy James Blair denied the allegations, as did Ballard Partners founder Brian Ballard.
The White House responds
The White House did not immediately respond to POLITICO. Asked by MS NOW, spokesperson Allison Schuster said that the “only special interest guiding President Trump’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people” and that the “only guiding factor behind the Trump administration’s health policymaking is Gold Standard Science”, the same line the White House had used in May.
A debate that goes beyond Makary
Makary’s framing leaves out several facts. The “strawberry banana” vapes he mentions are not among the products the FDA has authorized. The flavored products teenagers actually use are mostly unauthorized disposables, typically imported from China, and the federal action came as teen vaping fell to a 10-year low, according to the AP.
When he resigned, coverage focused on a political drama over the science of tobacco harm reduction. His new remarks, though, revive a legitimate question: whether the authorization process followed the agency’s own standards or political pressure. That question remains open. The FDA has since said that age-gating is not required for flavored vape authorization, even though the Glas decision rested largely on it.
