Article/Mention

Suzie Trigg Interviews FDA Policy Director at Food and Drug Law Institute Conference

December 14, 2020

Haynes and Boone, LLP Partner Suzie Trigg interviewed a policy director for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during a Fireside Chat at the Food and Drug Law Institute's Legal and Practical Issues in the Evolving World of Cannabis Regulation virtual event on Dec. 8.

Cannabis Wire covered the event. Below are excerpts of the interview Trigg conducted with Joseph Franklin, policy director for Amy Abernethy, who is the principal deputy commissioner of the FDA:

A conference brought together Food and Drug Administration, Federal Trade Commission, and Department of Justice officials, and while no new ground was broken, they lifted the hood a bit on how these federal agencies are thinking about cannabis and cannabidiol.

The Food and Drug Law Institute, a non-profit founded in 1949 and based in Washington, D.C., hosted a two-day virtual conference focused on cannabis. Or, more specifically, on the “legal and practical issues in the evolving world of cannabis regulation.”

Suzie Trigg, a partner at Haynes and Boone, LLP, first asked Franklin the question on many minds: Will the FDA’s long-anticipated CBD regulations be released before the end of the year, or after President-elect Joe Biden takes office?

“The only thing that we can say, from the FDA perspective,” Franklin said, is that “it was submitted in July for OMB review as part of the normal process. That’s the only comment we can provide on that at this time.”

Trigg asked about the gaps in data, and what data the cannabis and hemp industries could help to “generate.”

“Industry has an extremely important role in developing data, but it doesn’t have the only role in what I think is a collective challenge that we have as a society to understand a substance that many consumers and patients are ingesting on a regular basis,” Franklin said.

To read the full article, click here.