Food Drug Administration (FDA) free essay sample

Analyzes bureaucratic problems, focusing on approval of new drugs. Organization, powers, consumer safety, deregulation, examples, impact of drug companies, reform. Twenty-five percent of the American consumer dollar is spent on products regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Each day in America there can hardly be an individual or, for that matter, a pet or stock animal that does not eat foods, take drugs or use devices that have been, at some stage, regulated by the FDA. The control of such a vast array of products has generated a large bureaucracy that has been under intensifying siege for the last fifteen years. The terms of the siege vary considerably. The deregulating impulses motivating the Reagan-Bush administrations produced as much criticism of the FDA as have the pro-regulation feelings of consumer advocacy groups. The agency has been criticized for its excessive indulgence of the industries it regulates and it has been accused by these same industries of producing pointless barriers to economic and