Beginning in 1928, the drug regulatory staff within the Food, Drug and Insecticide Administration (as the agency was known then) underwent several important personnel changes. George Hoover left the agency after directing the Office of Drug Control for five years and Lyman Kebler resigned as Director of Special Collaborative Investigations. As a result, Special Collaborative Investigations became a unit in the Office of Drug Control, which by this time also contained a Chemical Unit, a Medical Unit, a Veterinary Unit, and a Pharmacology Unit. The new Director of Drug Control was James J. Durrett, like Kebler a physician and pharmacist; Durrett was a professor of public health at the University of Tennessee at the time he joined FDIA.

James J. Durrett, M.D., Ph.G., Chief, Drug Control 1928-1931.