Death threats, drugs and cannabidiol: Professor John Skerritt on a decade leading the TGA

Like most Australians, Professor John Skerritt’s life and career were thrown into chaos by COVID-19.
Professor John Skerritt. Photo: AAP.

Six months without a day off, 24 death threats and a COVID-19 pandemic — the past three years of leading the TGA have been a tough test for Adjunct Professor John Skerritt. 

He is retiring this week after more than a decade at the TGA, where he dealt with the regulation of medicinal cannabis, an abandoned plan to merge the TGA with New Zealand’s Medsafe drug regulator and, of course, the rage surrounding the agency’s approval of COVID-19 vaccines.