News Briefs

THE DAILY FED

News Briefs

The following news summaries are from OPM AM, the daily newsletter of the Office of Personnel Management. OPM AM is available on OPM Mainstreet, the agency's electronic bulletin board, at 202-606-4800.

COMMENTS COULDN'T KILL TOBACCO RULE PROCESS--"For many at the Food and Drug Administration, the year between August 1995 and August 1996 passed as a blur. During that time, the agency proposed and finalized new rules on teenage smoking....The FDA's tobacco plan, which restricts advertising the agency says is aimed at minors and restricts marketing and promotion, generated the biggest response ever to a proposed rule....In many ways, the tobacco initiative, which was challenged in court only last week and will begin being phased in this month, followed the usual course of any Washington rule-making, a course undertaken by agencies across the federal government hundreds of times a year. But in order to deal with the unprecedented challenge in record time, the FDA essentially had to reinvent the way it writes regulations--from purchasing a new computer system, which the agency used to scan, store and retrieve all the comments it received, to carefully winnowing form letters, even those that were handwritten by supporters and opponents of the rule" (The Washington Post, Page A19).