Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA) created unprecented enabling conditions for establishing national regulatory policy that reduces the burden of public health and societal problems associated with tobacco product use. The Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), created by the FDA to implement the TCA, developed a first-of-its-kind FDA/National Institutes of Health (NIH) collaborative program to fund Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS). METHODS: To assist the TCORS with addressing research priorites, working groups (WGs) comprised of FDA-CTP liasions and TCORS investigators were formed. Under the direction of the Center for Evaluation and Coordination of Trainin and Research (CECTR), the TCORS WGs seek to develop tangible work products in their respective areas of focus. RESULTS: The focus of the behavioral pharmacology WG evolved from publishing a narrow paper on behavioral methods in electronic cigarette research to a collection of papers on advances in behavioral laboratory methods that may inform tobacco regulatory science. CONCLUSION: This Special Issue contains articles that address all of the CTP research priorities and demonstrates how advances in behavioral laboratory methods made by TCORS investigators can inform FDA efforst to regulate tobacco products.