Regulatory Hearing Before the Food and Drug Administration; General Provisions; Amendments

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Food and Drug Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>21 CFR Part 16</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FDA-2024-N-3654]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0910-AI97</RIN> <SUBJECT>Regulatory Hearing Before the Food and Drug Administration; General Provisions; Amendments</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Food and Drug Administration, HHS. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Food and Drug Administration (FDA, Agency, or we) is issuing a direct final rule amending the Scope section of our regulation that provides for a regulatory hearing before the Agency in order to clarify when such hearings are available. We are revising the list of statutory provisions enumerated in the Scope section of the regulation by adding one statutory reference and removing a different statutory reference. The Agency is issuing these amendments directly as a final rule because we believe they are noncontroversial and FDA anticipates no significant adverse comments. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective February 3, 2025. Either electronic or written comments on the direct final rule or its companion proposed rule must be submitted by December 4, 2024. If FDA receives no significant adverse comments within the specified comment period, the Agency intends to publish a document confirming the effective date of the final rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> within 30 days after the comment period on this direct final rule ends. If timely significant adverse comments are received, the Agency will publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> withdrawing this direct final rule within 30 days after the comment period on this direct final rule ends. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments as follows. Please note that late, untimely filed comments will not be considered. The <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> electronic filing system will accept comments until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time at the end of December 4, 2024. Comments received by mail/hand delivery/courier (for written/paper submissions) will be considered timely if they are received on or before that date. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Electronic Submissions</HD> Submit electronic comments in the following way: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Comments submitted electronically, including attachments, to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> will be posted to the docket unchanged. Because your comment will be made public, you are solely responsible for ensuring that your comment does not include any confidential information that you or a third party may not wish to be posted, such as medical information, your or anyone else's Social Security number, or confidential business information, such as a manufacturing process. Please note that if you include your name, contact information, or other information that identifies you in the body of your comments, that information will be posted on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> • If you want to submit a comment with confidential information that you do not wish to be made available to the public, submit the comment as a written/paper submission and in the manner detailed (see “Written/Paper Submissions” and “Instructions”). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Written/Paper Submissions</HD> Submit written/paper submissions as follows: • <E T="03">Mail/Hand Delivery/Courier (for written/paper submissions):</E> Dockets Management Staff (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852. • For written/paper comments submitted to the Dockets Management Staff, FDA will post your comment, as well as any attachments, except for information submitted, marked and identified, as confidential, if submitted as detailed in “Instructions.” <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket No. FDA-2024-N-3654 for “Regulatory Hearing Before the Food and Drug Administration; General Provisions; Amendments.” Received comments, those filed in a timely manner (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ), will be placed in the docket and, except for those submitted as “Confidential Submissions,” publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the Dockets Management Staff between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, 240-402-7500. • Confidential Submissions—To submit a comment with confidential information that you do not wish to be made publicly available, submit your comments only as a written/paper submission. You should submit two copies total. One copy will include the information you claim to be confidential with a heading or cover note that states “THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.” The Agency will review this copy, including the claimed confidential information, in its consideration of comments. The second copy, which will have the claimed confidential information redacted/blacked out, will be available for public viewing and posted on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Submit both copies to the Dockets Management Staff. If you do not wish your name and contact information to be made publicly available, you can provide this information on the cover sheet and not in the body of your comments and you must identify this information as “confidential.” Any information marked as “confidential” will not be disclosed except in accordance with 21 CFR 10.20 and other applicable disclosure law. For more information about FDA's posting of comments to public dockets, see 80 FR 56469, September 18, 2015, or access the information at: <E T="03">https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2015-09-18/pdf/2015-23389.pdf.</E> <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or the electronic and written/paper comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and insert the docket number, found in brackets in the heading of this document, into the “Search” box and follow the prompts and/or go to the Dockets Management Staff, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852, 240-402-7500. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Robert Schwartz, Center for Tobacco Products, Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002, 1-877-287-1373, <E T="03">CTPRegulations@fda.hhs.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Purpose of the Direct Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Summary of the Major Provisions of the Direct Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Legal Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Costs and Benefits</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Direct Final Rulemaking Procedures</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Legal Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Description of the Direct Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Economic Analysis of Impacts</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Analysis of Environmental Impact</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IX. Federalism</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">X. Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose of the Direct Final Rule</HD> FDA is issuing this direct final rule to amend § 16.1 (21 CFR 16.1) to revise the list of statutory provisions enumerated in the Scope section of the regulation and thus clarify the circumstances under which the Agency intends to use the procedures in part 16 (21 CFR part 16) for regulatory hearings. This rule revises the list in § 16.1 by removing one statutory reference and adding a different statutory reference under the same section of the same statute. Because we believe the rule contains noncontroversial changes and we do not expect significant adverse comment on the rulemaking, we are using direct final rulemaking procedures, as described in this document. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Summary of the Major Provisions of the Direct Final Rule</HD> The direct final rule revises § 16.1, Scope, in order to clarify the circumstances under which the Agency intends to use the procedures in part 16 for regulatory hearings. The rule amends the list of statutory provisions enumerated in § 16.1. Specifically, the rule removes the reference to section 906(e)(1)(B) of the Federal Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) (21 U.S.C. 387f(e)(1)(B)) (the statutory provision that requires FDA to afford an opportunity for an oral hearing prior to promulgating a tobacco product manufacturing practice (TPMP) requirements regulation) and adds a reference to section 906(e)(2)(E) of the FD&C Act (the statutory provision that provides a petitioner an opportunity for an informal hearing on an order issued on the petitioner's request for temporary or permanent exemption or variance from TPMP requirements). <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Legal Authority</HD> FDA is issuing this rule under provisions of the FD&C Act related to regulations and hearings (21 U.S.C. 371), and general provisions respecting control of tobacco products, (21 U.S.C. 387f(e)). <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Costs and Benefits</HD> This direct final rule clarifies the circumstances under which the Agency intends to use the procedures in part 16 for a regulatory hearing. Potentially affected entities would include manufacturers of finished and bulk tobacco products who choose to request an exemption or variance from TPMP requirements and are afforded an opportunity for a hearing on orders regarding such requests. Because this rule merely clarifies which of its existing procedures FDA intends to use when ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━