tobacco – Overlawyered

“Third-hand smoke” and the need for focus in public health

Walter Olson — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 04:05:14 +0000

Following years and even decades in which much of the visible role of the public health profession has consisted of interventions against voluntary choices that had nothing to do with inflicting contagious disease, we have come to re-learn painfully about its older and more fundamental role in situations where the survival of strangers really may depend on our personal choices each day. If there’s any justice, it means none of us will ever have to pay attention again to concocted scares over things like “third-hand smoke,” said to be transmitted by persons who didn’t smoke around us, but came into our presence bearing residues of tobacco smoke on their hair or clothing from having smoked elsewhere. [Jacob Grier, Exponents magazine; our 2009 coverage]

Tags: public health, tobacco

“Third-hand smoke” and the need for focus in public health is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

COVID-19 pandemic roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 09:59:09 +0000

I’ve started a notebook at Cato tracking abuse of government’s emergency powers. First installment tags NYC mayor de Blasio (claims he will shut down synagogues “permanently” if they defy his orders), L.A. mayor Garcetti (going to use the city utility to shut off violators), and a Gotham group that sees the crisis as the perfect excuse for an edict banning tobacco;
Drones spy on Brits taking country walks: “Here’s the problem, beyond the creepy secret surveillance: These people in the video are not in violation of this new law. The Derbyshire Police are in the wrong.” [Scott Shackford]
To get more ventilators, just order private companies to make them, say fans of the Defense Production Act. Not as simple as that [Megan McArdle]
“Needed fast: a plan to open up the economy again in a virus-safe way…. figure out what combination of personal distancing, self-isolation, testing, cleaning, etc. will allow each kind of business to reopen, at least partially.” [John Cochrane and more; Chris Edwards, Cato]
Many states have laws against wearing face masks on the street, which one hopes will go unenforced for masks meant to intercept virus transmission [Jacob Sullum]
In retrospect, it might have been wise for the World Health Organization to express its opposition to tobacco use in some way other than by calling it a “pandemic” [Pierre Lemieux]

Tags: Bill de Blasio, COVID-19 virus, Los Angeles, tobacco, utilities, WO writings

COVID-19 pandemic roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Who is better positioned than a superintendent of schools to take a stand on this issue?”

Walter Olson — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 16:03:13 +0000

Who, indeed? “School districts are at the head of a cresting wave of litigation against JUUL and other e-cigarette manufacturers, seeking to recover the costs of prevention programs, counseling, and treatment for addicted students. Nearly 100 districts have sued.” [Stephen Sawchuk and Denisa Superville, Education Week]

Tags: schools, tobacco

“Who is better positioned than a superintendent of schools to take a stand on this issue?” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Public health roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 11:02:06 +0000

After a crackdown on saloon drinking backed by Theodore Roosevelt and others, creative New Yorkers opened 1500 new “hotels” and complied with rules linking alcohol to food by serving desiccated sandwiches meant not to be eaten [Darrell Hartman, Atlas Obscura on Raines Law]
“‘The evidence is very, very strong that there’s a powerful potential health benefit if you can’t get people to quit entirely, to get them to switch from cigarette smoking to vaping,’ Olson said.” [Scott McClallen, Center Square] Here comes Massachusetts to make things worse [Jeffrey Singer]
If you suppose that transcontinental air travel is worsening the risk of global pandemics, then you may suppose erroneously [Johan Norberg “Dead Wrong” video]
Zoning will not bring slimness: “Fast-Food Bans Are a Dumb Idea That Won’t Die” [Baylen Linnekin] Having a supermarket enter a food desert has at best a minor effect on healthy eating [Hunt Allcott et al., Quarterly Journal of Economics, earlier]
The imperialism of public health: wealth inequality, affordable housing declared topics for action by the public health profession [Petrie-Flom]
“From the 1910s through the 1950s, and in some places into the 1960s and 1970s, tens of thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of American women were detained and forcibly examined for STIs…. If the women tested positive, U.S. officials locked them away in penal institutions with no due process….. During World War II, the American Civil Liberties Union not only failed to oppose the Plan; its founder, Roger Baldwin, sent a memorandum encouraging its local branches to cooperate with officials enforcing it.” [Scott W. Stern, History.com]
Public health campaign against arsenic-tainted wells in Bangladesh appears to have inadvertently increased child mortality in places where alternative was surface water, which is more likely to carry microbial contamination [Nina Buchmann, Erica M. Field, Rachel Glennerster, & Reshmaan N. Hussam, Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy No. 180]

Tags: airlines, alcohol, land use and zoning, public health, tobacco

Public health roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Great moments in asset forfeiture law

Walter Olson — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 10:55:51 +0000

The Massachusetts House of Representatives last week “approved a bill that would ban flavored e-cigarettes, impose a 75 percent excise tax on ‘electronic nicotine delivery systems’ (including e-liquids as well as devices), and authorize forfeiture of cars driven by vapers caught with ‘untaxed’ products.” The law specifies that the state can seize, resell, and keep the proceeds from a motor vehicle, boat or airplane found to have contained or transported a single untaxed vaping device. “This is completely insane and endangers the property rights of anyone in Massachusetts,” said Dan Alban of the Institute for Justice, an attorney who has worked on cases of forfeiture abuse. [Jacob Sullum, Reason]

Tags: forfeiture, Massachusetts, tobacco

Great moments in asset forfeiture law is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

October 23 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 10:01:16 +0000

“Per Hailey’s Law, Washington state police are required to impound a vehicle any time they arrest the driver for a DUI, regardless of whether the car is off the road or someone else can safely drive it away. But that violates the state’s constitution, explains the Washington Supreme Court, because warrantless seizures require individualized consideration of the circumstances. This law eliminates that individualized consideration, and the legislature cannot legislate constitutional rights away.” [Institute for Justice “Short Circuit” on Washington v. Villela, in which it signed on to (IJ signed on to an amicus brief; David Rasbach, Bellingham Herald)
“The Great American Vape Panic of 2019 Is Producing Some Wild Lawsuits” [Alex Norcia, Vice; Priscilla DeGregory and Ben Feuerherd, New York Post]
Federal judge rejects state’s challenge to SALT tax revisions, push to raise minimum legal age for marriage, aerial police surveillance in Baltimore, pension funding and more in my new Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes] Yuripzy Morgan took time on her WBAL radio show to discuss my article on the Supreme Court’s consideration of job bias law and you can listen here;
Great moments in reparations: candidates propose dropping cash from airplanes on neighborhoods that were redlined 50+ years ago. But mostly different people live there now [Robert VerBruggen, National Review; Andre M. Perry and David Harshbarger, Brookings Institution]
Full Fifth Circuit should review ruling upholding Indian Child Welfare Act against constitutional challenge [Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus brief seeking en banc reconsideration in Brackeen v. Bernhard; earlier]
Bay Area: “Donor who gave $45K to elect sheriff got coveted gun permit from her office” [Josh Koehn, Matthias Gafni and Joaquin Palomino, San Francisco Chronicle; Santa Clara County, Calif.]

Tags: age of majority, Bay Area, DUI, Fourth Amendment, guns, Maryland, reparations, tobacco, Washington state

October 23 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

October 16 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 10:01:49 +0000

“Lawyer says it ‘would be an honor’ to be disbarred; disciplinary board aims to oblige” [ABA Journal, Lowering the Bar]
In the mail: Jacob Grier’s new book The Rediscovery of Tobacco: Smoking, Vaping, and the Creative Destruction of the Cigarette [more from author, Mark Fogerson/Portland Monthly, John Locke Foundation podcast with Grier and Mitch Kokai] And: Cato video;
Re: House subpoenas aimed at the Trump administration, colleague Ilya Shapiro wrote this comprehensive pre-game report [last December for the Washington Examiner]
NBC might not have picked the ideal poster inmate to showcase the problem of long-term sentencing of nonviolent drug offenders [Kent Scheidegger via Volokh]
Profile of police brutality/civil rights plaintiff’s lawyer Benjamin Crump [John H. Richardson, New York magazine]
Conservative Tennessee lawmaker introduces bill to provide instructions for jury nullification in acquittal direction only [Scott Greenfield in February]

Tags: don't, jury nullification, police, subpoenas, tobacco, U.S. House of Representatives

October 16 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

After outbreak of bootleg-vape injuries, government restricts aboveboard vaping products

Walter Olson — Sat, 21 Sep 2019 15:55:28 +0000

1) Batches of black-market vaping products, mostly containing THC rather than nicotine and used to get high, turn out to contain adulterants, most likely Vitamin E acetate, known to be harmful when inhaled. Over a period of weeks, hundreds of users fall seriously ill and several die in a classic “bad batch” episode familiar to epidemiologists and those who study the Drug War. [Erin Schumaker, ABC News]

2) Government reacts by banning a range of lawful nicotine vaping products sold in stores, none of which have been implicated in the deaths or injuries.

3) Predictable result: to drive some nicotine vape users back to cigarette smoking, and others toward sources of black-market supply. Good job, government! What problem would you like to fix next?

[Kimberly Leonard and Cassidy Morrison, Washington Examiner; Federalist Society Regulatory Transparency Project video featuring Sally Satel; Slate podcast with Jacob Grier; Jeffrey Singer, New York Daily News]

More: “Might restricting e-cigarette flavors actually increase smoking? (And acculturate vapers to tobacco flavors?) There’s actually some research on that” [Jonathan Adler on Twitter] Plus: trial lawyers circle vaping industry [Brendan Pierson, Reuters]

Tags: FDA, illegal drugs, nanny state, tobacco

After outbreak of bootleg-vape injuries, government restricts aboveboard vaping products is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

December 12 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 12 Dec 2018 10:59:29 +0000

“Scott Gottlieb’s FDA Is Moving Toward a Stealth Ban on Cigarettes and Cigars” [Jacob Grier, Reason]
Supreme Court should take Melissa and Aaron Klein cake-refusal case from Oregon and resolve the issues of free expression it dodged in Masterpiece [Ilya Shapiro and Patrick Moran, ABA Journal, earlier on Melissa and Aaron Klein cake-refusal case including oppressive $135,000 fine levied by Oregon BOLI (Bureau of Labor and Industries)]
“Administrative Law Is Bunk. We Need a Bundesverwaltungsgericht” [Michael Greve, responses from Mike Rappaport, Philip Wallach, and Ilan Wurman, and rejoinder from Greve]
New York’s family court system is failing children and their families [Naomi Riley/City Journal, thanks for quote]
“The Emmys People Are Opposing A Pet Products Company Named After A Dog Named ‘Emmy'” [Tim Geigner, TechDirt]
Metaphor alert: “Lawmaker Injured by Flying Constitution” [Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar, and funny throughout]

Tags: administrative law, constitutional law, family law, FDA, tobacco

December 12 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Tobacco payouts: the Engle exception

Walter Olson — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 04:05:42 +0000

Twenty years after the multistate tobacco settlement, cigarette companies are mostly not facing suits in the U.S. for damages to individual smokers’ health — except in Florida, with its Engle line of cases. [Fair Warning/Industrial Safety and Hygiene News; earlier here, here, and more]

Tags: Florida, tobacco

Tobacco payouts: the Engle exception is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system