Posts Tagged ‘tobacco’

April 20 roundup

  • “Victory For Blogger Patterico In Free Speech Case” [Ken at Popehat, earlier]
  • “Watch ‘disparate impact’ become the new HUD jihad if it succeeds in [Westchester]” [Jackson Jambalaya, earlier]
  • “Big Tobacco uses Big Government to keep out Small Competitors” [Tim Carney, DC Examiner]
  • Casinos or no, Connecticut tribes want the federal dole [AP]
  • High cost of litigation to California municipalities [L.A. Daily News, new CALA report in PDF] “San Francisco’s iconic cable cars cost city millions of dollars in legal settlements” [AP]
  • Morning sickness drug Bendectin, famed casualty of unfounded litigation, returns to market renamed diclegis [MedPageToday, David Bernstein; background here, etc.; classic account from Peter W. Huber’s Galileo’s Revenge] Another Bendectin sequel: Barry Nace, former ATLA/AAJ head, draws 120-day suspension from West Virginia high court [Chamber-backed WV Record]
  • “Tennessee’s ‘guns in parking lots’ bill a net drain on liberty [George Scoville; similarly Bainbridge and earlier] Another pro-gun but anti-liberty idea: Colorado lawmaker wants to force firms to hire guards if they deny armed customers access to their premises [KOAA, SecurityInfoWatch, Durango Herald (idea nixed in committee)]

Feds demand ideologically confessional “corrective ads” from tobacco companies

As part of the wrangling over remedies imposed by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, the federal government is demanding that tobacco companies be made to run ads declaring that the government was right and they wrong on various controversial issues, and in particular that they confess to having lied on purpose. A demand for judicially imposed self-denunciation, and in particular a demand that private actors be ordered to assert ideologically charged propositions that do not reflect their actual inward beliefs, should disturb civil libertarians, it seems to me, even if it does not disturb the U.S. Department of Justice. I’m quoted at 4:47 in this report by the BBC’s Ben Wright.

March 22 roundup

  • $10 million judgment “won’t hit Albuquerque property owners on their tax bills because it’ll come out of [city’s] self-insurance fund” Say what? [Albuquerque Journal via Ed Krayewski, Reason]
  • Latest Bloomberg scheme: ban display of tobacco products [Jacob Sullum, Patrick at Popehat, Patrick Basham/Daily Caller, Ira Stoll, Elie Mystal/Above the Law]
  • Female? Hispanic? Planted a backyard garden between 1981-2000, while wishing you could have gone bigger with the hobby? Feds’ ag-bias settlement may have bucks for you [James Bovard/WSJ, earlier on Pigford black-farmer settlement here, here, here, etc.]
  • Newly published, includes blurb by me: Mark White, The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism [Amazon]
  • “NYC adopts nation’s toughest law against refusing to hire unemployed” [AP, earlier here, etc.]
  • Estate of judge is suing prominent Philadelphia class action lawyer over fall at party in home [Legal Intelligencer]
  • For Wisconsin’s left, Roggensack/Fallone judicial contest might be the last hope for derailing Gov. Walker’s labor reform [Rick Esenberg]

FDA declines to approve new tobacco products

Is this what Congress intended, or what the public was told, when the FDA was given authority over tobacco in 2009? Jacob Grier at the Atlantic:

As first reported by Michael Felberbaum of the Associated Press, since 2009 the agency has received about 3,500 substantial equivalence reports [i.e., submissions seeking approval for new products on the grounds that they are substantially equivalent to products already on the market]. Approximately 115 employees work on reviewing them. And to date they have issued exactly zero rulings.

Can it really be the case that none of the 3,500 reflect new products that are substantially equivalent to (or for that matter safer than) the cigarettes already on the market? And while we’re asking questions, who benefits when new competition for existing products is cut off? More: Michael Siegel.

Update: NIH distances itself from Stanton Glantz tobacco-influence study

Or maybe “disavowed” is a better word. Questioned by Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins said he was “troubled” by the revelation that NIH funds paid for a laughably conspiracy-minded report by Stanton Glantz attacking political conservatives, calling it an “unfortunate outcome” and saying, “We thought we were funding a different kind of research when those grants were awarded.” This is not the first (or the fifth, or the tenth) round of axe-grinding advocacy “research” from Glantz — the National Cancer Institute dished out more than a million dollars this time — and one must wonder at what point he will stop asking the general public to pay for it. [Science Mag; Jacob Sullum; earlier]

Product liability roundup

Food roundup

  • New thinner-isn’t-healthier study should give pause [Paul Campos, NYT]
  • Inspectors order Minnesota soda shop to yank candy cigarettes, bubble gum cigars [Daily Caller]
  • Cleveland might have its own version of Pike Place or Reading Terminal Market, if not for… [Nick Gillespie]
  • Regulators took it down: “San Francisco’s Libertarian Food Market Is Closing” [Baylen Linnekin]
  • How brutal is vegetarianism to animals? [Mike Archer via Tyler Cowen]
  • Crazy: S.F. mulls zoning ban on new restaurants to protect existing ones [Linnekin] How Chicago suppresses food trucks [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
  • Federal calorie labeling rules will burden restaurants [Wash. Times]

Safety roundup

  • Patrick Basham on proposal to license smokers [Philadelphia Inquirer/Cato, earlier] New study confirms that rather than externalizing costs to the public treasury, smokers tend to cost social insurance programs less than nonsmokers do [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
  • Public health busybodies call on UK government to set minimum price for alcoholic drinks [Telegraph] Carrie Nation never thought of this: anti-booze campaigners target its calorie count [Baylen Linnekin] New York state plans anti-alcohol campaign [NY Post]
  • “Will Litigation over Playground Injuries Create a Generation of Neurotics?” [WSJ via ABA Journal]
  • Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick reassigns his exceedingly accident-prone state highway director [Boston Globe, Ilya Somin]
  • “Magnet spheres may soon be harder to acquire than ammunition in the U.S.” as Buckyballs gives up [Anthony Fisher/Reason, earlier] And from Twitter: “Those 0.0 deaths per year were not in vain.” [@TPCarney modifying @bigtimcavanaugh]
  • “Mary Cain wants $3000 damages from the street car company for a ‘sudden jerk.’ MO1917” [@tweetsofold]
  • “No Liquid Soap Allowed in Pre-School Bathroom: Children Might Drink It” [Free-Range Kids]

And finally, the catchy, unsettling safety promotion video that’s been everywhere the last week or two, from the Melbourne transit authority:

BATF’s new asset forfeiture powers

My Cato Institute colleague Nita Ghei, writing at the Washington Times, has more on the newly expanded authority of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to “‘seize and administratively forfeit property involved in controlled-substance abuses.’ That means government can grab firearms and other property from someone who has never been convicted or even charged with any crime.” Earlier here and (podcast) here. More: Americans for Forfeiture Reform.