The Trump administration has placed a former tobacco executive at the helm of legislative affairs inside the very agency tasked with protecting Americans from the consequences of smoking.
Stephen Sayle, a government affairs strategist who served as U.S. vice president of corporate affairs at Fontem Ventures between 2017 and 2018, was quietly namedCDC deputy director for legislative affairsin March 2026. Fontem Ventures is a subsidiary of Imperial Brands, theBritish multinational tobacco corporationbehind the e-cigarette brand blu and the oral nicotine pouch brand Zone.
Public health experts, legal watchdogs, and Democratic lawmakers have since raised alarm, describing the appointment as an industry foothold inside a public health agency it has spent decades working against.
Before entering Fontem's orbit, Sayle built his career at the intersection of lobbying and Capitol Hill. He served as legislative counsel to Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) from 1989 to 1993 and later as majority counsel for the House Energy and Commerce Committee from 1995 to 1997.
He also spent two years from 2013 to 2015 as a subcommittee staff director on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, a role he took on afterlobbying for Chevron, a tenure that drew its own conflict-of-interest scrutiny. The Hill newspaper recognised him as one of Washington's Top Hired Guns in 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Former tobacco industry executive Stephen Sayle has been appointed to a senior leadership role at the CDC.Sayle was a lobbyist for Chevron before working for Big Tobacco.pic.twitter.com/rjgmAseOrs
His CDC appointment, first reported bySTAT Newson 22 April 2026, was described by Dr. Timothy McAfee as 'unprecedented' in aneditorialpublished in the journal Tobacco Control. McAfee headed the CDC's Office of Smoking and Health from 2010 to 2017 and is now a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. 'It should be 100% clear that we don't want former tobacco industry executives working inside the nation's public health agencies helping influence policy adoption,' he told STAT News in an email.
The Department of Health and Human Services defended the hire. Spokesperson Andrew Nixon told STAT that Sayle brings 'more than 25 years of experience working at senior levels of the federal government and will be a valuable asset at the CDC to ensure effective coordination with Congress.' Nixon added that, like all HHS officials, Sayle is required to comply with applicable ethics laws and regulations. HHS confirmed Sayle holds no shares in Imperial Brands or other tobacco companies, though critics argue financial ownership is only one dimension of the conflict.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly pledged to 'shut the revolving door' between industry and government. McAfee said Sayle's appointment is 'completely inconsistent' with that commitment. Kennedy has also endorsed vaping as a harm-reduction strategy, and this spring Sayle's former employer, Fontem US,filed a lawsuitagainst the FDA, Kennedy, and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, alleging the agency unlawfully stalled its application to market Zone nicotine pouches. The lawsuit places Kennedy at the centre of a dispute directly involving the company Sayle left to join the CDC.
Kelsey Romeo-Stuppy, managing attorney at the anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health, connected the Sayle appointment to a broader pattern. 'The federal regulation of tobacco in the U.S. has been gutted under the Trump administration,' she told STAT. 'This is just another step further in that direction of failing to protect Americans from the harms of tobacco, and in fact going in the opposite direction.'
Source: International Business Times UK
