Let's not forget that when Gottlieb was appointed, the drop-dead date for the industry was 8/8/2018. He gave us a reprieve. In addition, he did not enforce the "No new products after 8/8/2016" part of the Deeming that was already in effect. I'm not sure anyone in his position could have gotten away with doing more than he did, coming in after the had already been finalized for the better part of a year.
Yes, All that was wonderful.
Everything was great up until around eight months ago
That's when he decided that 0.6% of non smoking teens vaping regularly (20 days or more per month) was some kind of "epidemic" even though the daily teen smoking rate had dropped by more than 0.6%.
Let's not kid ourselves and think pharma hadn't already approached him about what he's going to do after leaving the FDA.
Could they have approached him BEFORE he announced the horrible epidemic of teens no longer smoking cigarettes?
You bet they could.
They likely approached him October of 2018 around the same time they got him to "fast track" a shitload of new drugs with nothing more than mouse studies as evidence of effectiveness.
He started off great.
He was great all the way up until the time he sold out.