Brownstone Institute
Lockdown Architect Anthony Fauci Quits to Write a Book
BY
It had to come at some point, but Anthony Fauci, the highest paid employee in government today, is finally leaving his post as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a post that enabled him to become the face of lockdowns and vaccine mandates that have left enormous economic, cultural, and health destruction in their wake. He has never acknowledged the downside to the policies he pushed as advisor to both Trump and Biden, and still refuses even fully to admit his role. Nor has he been forthcoming about his role in the funding of gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
Has Fauci’s presence become a liability to the Biden administration and the Democrats generally? Perhaps but there is also the issue of book royalties that await him once leaving his post with government. The New York Times explains: “While he has been working on a memoir, Dr. Fauci said he did not yet have a publisher. In an interview last year, he said he was precluded from contracting with a publisher while he was still employed by the government.”
Both factors could explain the decision. He will wait for his final departure until after the November election.
No one person in the US government was as influential as Fauci in pushing the Trump administration toward locking down the country as testing results revealed the spread of the virus that causes Covid. From late January through March 2020, he was in constant consultation with others about the virus and the possibility that it could have come from a lab in Wuhan, China, with which he had developed ties through intermediaries such as Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance.
Fauci initially wrote to reporters that no vaccine would be necessary. On March 2, 2020, David Gerson of the Washington Post wrote asking about the point of social distancing. Fauci wrote back:
“Social distancing is not really geared to wait for a vaccine. The major point is to prevent easy spread of infections in schools (closing them), crowded events such as theaters, stadiums (cancel events), work places (do teleworking where possible)…. The goal of social distancing is to prevent a single person who is infected to readily spread to several others, which is facilitated by close contact in crowds. Close proximity of people will keep the R0 higher than 1 and even as high as 2 to 3. If we can get the R0 to less than 1, the epidemic will gradually decline and stop on its own without a vaccine.”
Those were his beliefs two weeks ahead of the lockdowns. It’s a remarkable email not only because it reveals that Fauci was not among the champions of the vaccine but also because he believed that lockdown policies would stop the spread and even eviscerate the virus itself.
That position puts Fauci in the camp of what later became known as the Zero Covid movement that so completely drove policy in China, New Zealand, and Australia. It did not work, there or here or anywhere.
The email also shows that Fauci had no interest in the power of naturally acquired immunity that even the CDC now admits contributed to the end of the pandemic. The vaccines that Fauci later came to champion stopped neither infection nor spread, contrary to his promise, so it stands to reason that the end of the pandemic comes about by the very forces that he ruled out in his initial emails. To him, the lockdowns alone would somehow work to end the pandemic. Nowhere on the planet has that proven true.
Fauci stayed on after the Trump administration left office, having likely pushed trial delays that caused the vaccine release to appear only after the election. He then became the leading pusher of mask and vaccine mandates, and later boosters on a regular schedule as the key to getting out of the pandemic.
He was the subject of a documentary profile in 2021 that garnered praise from critics and rotten tomatoes from audiences.
Fauci’s influence over Covid policy follows decades of work in the federal government during which he acquired enormous influence over the use of money dispersed by the National Institutes of Health. He will likely be called by a Republican Congress to testify on many mysterious aspects of his tenure. The publisher of his forthcoming book surely hopes it will be an international bestseller, and Fauci will face no restrictions in taking an advance on the earning of royalties from sales.
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
A walk through a dozen convenience stores in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, says a lot about how US nicotine policy actually works. Only about one in eight nicotine-pouch products for sale is legal. The rest are unauthorized—but they’re not all the same. Some are brightly branded, with uncertain ingredients, not approved by any Western regulator, and clearly aimed at impulse buyers. Others—like Sweden’s NOAT—are the opposite: muted, well-made, adult-oriented, and already approved for sale in Europe.
Yet in the United States, NOAT has been told to stop selling. In September 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the company a warning letter for offering nicotine pouches without marketing authorization. That might make sense if the products were dangerous, but they appear to be among the safest on the market: mild flavors, low nicotine levels, and recyclable paper packaging. In Europe, regulators consider them acceptable. In America, they’re banned. The decision looks, at best, strange—and possibly arbitrary.
What the Market Shows
My October 2025 audit was straightforward. I visited twelve stores and recorded every distinct pouch product visible for sale at the counter. If the item matched one of the twenty ZYN products that the FDA authorized in January, it was counted as legal. Everything else was counted as illegal.
Two of the stores told me they had recently received FDA letters and had already removed most illegal stock. The other ten stores were still dominated by unauthorized products—more than 93 percent of what was on display. Across all twelve locations, about 12 percent of products were legal ZYN, and about 88 percent were not.
The illegal share wasn’t uniform. Many of the unauthorized products were clearly high-nicotine imports with flashy names like Loop, Velo, and Zimo. These products may be fine, but some are probably high in contaminants, and a few often with very high nicotine levels. Others were subdued, plainly meant for adult users. NOAT was a good example of that second group: simple packaging, oat-based filler, restrained flavoring, and branding that makes no effort to look “cool.” It’s the kind of product any regulator serious about harm reduction would welcome.
Enforcement Works
To the FDA’s credit, enforcement does make a difference. The two stores that received official letters quickly pulled their illegal stock. That mirrors the agency’s broader efforts this year: new import alerts to detain unauthorized tobacco products at the border (see also Import Alert 98-06), and hundreds of warning letters to retailers, importers, and distributors.
But effective enforcement can’t solve a supply problem. The list of legal nicotine-pouch products is still extremely short—only a narrow range of ZYN items. Adults who want more variety, or stores that want to meet that demand, inevitably turn to gray-market suppliers. The more limited the legal catalog, the more the illegal market thrives.
Why the NOAT Decision Appears Bizarre
The FDA’s own actions make the situation hard to explain. In January 2025, it authorized twenty ZYN products after finding that they contained far fewer harmful chemicals than cigarettes and could help adult smokers switch. That was progress. But nine months later, the FDA has approved nothing else—while sending a warning letter to NOAT, arguably the least youth-oriented pouch line in the world.
The outcome is bad for legal sellers and public health. ZYN is legal; a handful of clearly risky, high-nicotine imports continue to circulate; and a mild, adult-market brand that meets European safety and labeling rules is banned. Officially, NOAT’s problem is procedural—it lacks a marketing order. But in practical terms, the FDA is punishing the very design choices it claims to value: simplicity, low appeal to minors, and clean ingredients.
This approach also ignores the differences in actual risk. Studies consistently show that nicotine pouches have far fewer toxins than cigarettes and far less variability than many vapes. The biggest pouch concerns are uneven nicotine levels and occasional traces of tobacco-specific nitrosamines, depending on manufacturing quality. The serious contamination issues—heavy metals and inconsistent dosage—belong mostly to disposable vapes, particularly the flood of unregulated imports from China. Treating all “unauthorized” products as equally bad blurs those distinctions and undermines proportional enforcement.
A Better Balance: Enforce Upstream, Widen the Legal Path
My small Montgomery County survey suggests a simple formula for improvement.
First, keep enforcement targeted and focused on suppliers, not just clerks. Warning letters clearly change behavior at the store level, but the biggest impact will come from auditing distributors and importers, and stopping bad shipments before they reach retail shelves.
Second, make compliance easy. A single-page list of authorized nicotine-pouch products—currently the twenty approved ZYN items—should be posted in every store and attached to distributor invoices. Point-of-sale systems can block barcodes for anything not on the list, and retailers could affirm, once a year, that they stock only approved items.
Third, widen the legal lane. The FDA launched a pilot program in September 2025 to speed review of new pouch applications. That program should spell out exactly what evidence is needed—chemical data, toxicology, nicotine release rates, and behavioral studies—and make timely decisions. If products like NOAT meet those standards, they should be authorized quickly. Legal competition among adult-oriented brands will crowd out the sketchy imports far faster than enforcement alone.
The Bottom Line
Enforcement matters, and the data show it works—where it happens. But the legal market is too narrow to protect consumers or encourage innovation. The current regime leaves a few ZYN products as lonely legal islands in a sea of gray-market pouches that range from sensible to reckless.
The FDA’s treatment of NOAT stands out as a case study in inconsistency: a quiet, adult-focused brand approved in Europe yet effectively banned in the US, while flashier and riskier options continue to slip through. That’s not a public-health victory; it’s a missed opportunity.
If the goal is to help adult smokers move to lower-risk products while keeping youth use low, the path forward is clear: enforce smartly, make compliance easy, and give good products a fair shot. Right now, we’re doing the first part well—but failing at the second and third. It’s time to fix that.
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
Cigarettes kill nearly half a million Americans each year. Everyone knows it, including the Food and Drug Administration. Yet while the most lethal nicotine product remains on sale in every gas station, the FDA continues to block or delay far safer alternatives.
Nicotine pouches—small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip—deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved.
Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This “Swedish Experience” shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily—no prohibition required.
In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head. Since Congress gave it sweeping authority in 2009, the agency has demanded that every new product undergo a Premarket Tobacco Product Application, or PMTA, proving it is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That sounds reasonable until you see how the process works.
Manufacturers must spend millions on speculative modeling about how their products might affect every segment of society—smokers, nonsmokers, youth, and future generations—before they can even reach the market. Unsurprisingly, almost all PMTAs have been denied or shelved. Reduced-risk products sit in limbo while Marlboros and Newports remain untouched.
Only this January did the agency relent slightly, authorizing 20 ZYN nicotine-pouch products made by Swedish Match, now owned by Philip Morris. The FDA admitted the obvious: “The data show that these specific products are appropriate for the protection of public health.” The toxic-chemical levels were far lower than in cigarettes, and adult smokers were more likely to switch than teens were to start.
The decision should have been a turning point. Instead, it exposed the double standard. Other pouch makers—especially smaller firms from Sweden and the US, such as NOAT—remain locked out of the legal market even when their products meet the same technical standards.
The FDA’s inaction has created a black market dominated by unregulated imports, many from China. According to my own research, roughly 85 percent of pouches now sold in convenience stores are technically illegal.
The agency claims that this heavy-handed approach protects kids. But youth pouch use in the US remains very low—about 1.5 percent of high-school students according to the latest National Youth Tobacco Survey—while nearly 30 million American adults still smoke. Denying safer products to millions of addicted adults because a tiny fraction of teens might experiment is the opposite of public-health logic.
There’s a better path. The FDA should base its decisions on science, not fear. If a product dramatically reduces exposure to harmful chemicals, meets strict packaging and marketing standards, and enforces Tobacco 21 age verification, it should be allowed on the market. Population-level effects can be monitored afterward through real-world data on switching and youth use. That’s how drug and vaccine regulation already works.
Sweden’s evidence shows the results of a pragmatic approach: a near-smoke-free society achieved through consumer choice, not coercion. The FDA’s own approval of ZYN proves that such products can meet its legal standard for protecting public health. The next step is consistency—apply the same rules to everyone.
Combustion, not nicotine, is the killer. Until the FDA acts on that simple truth, it will keep protecting the cigarette industry it was supposed to regulate.
Author
ATA Collect $72 Million in Dues But Couldn’t Pay Striking Teachers a Dime
Lack of adequate health care pushing Canadians toward assisted suicide
A picture is worth a thousand spreadsheets
Calgary mayor should retain ‘blanket rezoning’ for sake of Calgarian families
AI Faces Energy Problem With Only One Solution, Oil and Gas
Will Paramount turn the tide of legacy media and entertainment?
Federal budget: It’s not easy being green
-
Business2 days agoCanada is failing dismally at our climate goals. We’re also ruining our economy.
-
Health2 days agoCDC’s Autism Reversal: Inside the Collapse of a 25‑Year Public Health Narrative
-
Health2 days agoBREAKING: CDC quietly rewrites its vaccine–autism guidance
-
Crime2 days agoCocaine, Manhunts, and Murder: Canadian Cartel Kingpin Prosecuted In US
-
Daily Caller2 days agoBREAKING: Globalist Climate Conference Bursts Into Flames
-
Alberta2 days ago‘Weird and wonderful’ wells are boosting oil production in Alberta and Saskatchewan
-
Energy2 days agoHere’s what they don’t tell you about BC’s tanker ban
-
Business11 hours agoNew airline compensation rules could threaten regional travel and push up ticket prices