Friday, September 25, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #814
September 25, 2015 - Issue #814"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside." - Mark Twain |
Kerry McCarthy, Shadow Environment Secretary, Says Treat Meat Eaters Like Smokers. Jeremy Corbyn's appointment of Kerry McCarthy, who is a vegan, to the post raised eyebrows given the job involves working with farmers. "I really believe that meat should be treated in exactly the same way as tobacco, with public campaigns to stop people eating it," she said. In an interview with vegan magazine Viva!life, McCarthy added: "Progress on animal welfare is being made at EU level... but in the end it comes down to not eating meat or dairy."
UK: New Nicotine Alliance. It has only been a 'mere' three months since we last sent our news update out to our supporters, and a lot has happened since then. Conferences, reports, reviews, you name it, and we have probably done it. Toward beneficial and practical standards for e-cigarettes. by Carl V Phillips. At the GTNF2015 conference I was on a panel discussing e-cigarette standards. The standards being discussed include manufacturing practices (e.g., clean rooms, hardware materials), specific technologies (e.g., whether a heating coil is capable of overheating, safe batteries), and ingredients (e.g., the perennial debates about whether some flavoring agents pose too much of a hazard). I decided to take the approach of addressing what the proper role for standards is, from a political economy perspective. 
So Tourists Can Indulge: Denver May Allow Pot In Bars And Restaurants. It's already legal to smoke pot at home in Colorado. Now the Denver City Council is considering allowing use in public places. Actually, the police department cares. They've handed out more than 1,000 public consumption citations just last year. This is not what pot advocates had in mind when they promoted legalized marijuana. So they collected signatures to put yet another measure on the ballot, this time allowing pot use at many bars and restaurants in Denver.
CA: Davis City Council. By Robert J. Deitz, II. I have reviewed your recommended action on banning smoking in the Greenbelt, Parks, E St plaza. These are all large and open areas with no confined or restricted space where people might be forced to be in a area they do not want to be. This is the area smokers have been forced to go to since they were banned from being in bars or restaurants where they were previously welcomed. There are ample areas of any community in the State of California where there are smoke free places. There should be accommodation for other citizens who choose to smoke. We already make accommodation for handicapped people to access most areas, we make accommodations for overweight people, we make accommodations for all types of people to be in our communities. We should make accommodations for smokers also. To not do so is starting to slip down a slippery slope.
Georgia Update: 10 years after smoking ban, percentage of bars and restaurants using exemption has doubled. By Andy Miller. "While the law is well known and well accepted, restaurants have figured out how to work within the law and allow smoking," said Eriksen, dean of the School of Public Health at Georgia State. AND Smoky air: Zero complaints, multiple hideouts following ban. UGA is not alone in this. If you wander around to the campus newspaper sites around the country where bans have been implemented you will find instance after instance where it is either being reported on as being ignored or where antismoking students complain that it is not being enforced. These bans are usually the result of political pressures or funding blackmailing, and once they're on the record no one really cares about them. Oklahoma Update: State should reconsider tobacco trust fund priorities. So, "Education" would depend on Tobacco sales? They should simply stop the MSA and give the money back. AND Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust, By Theodore King. AND Letter to the editor: Tobacco settlement a social engineering project. By Jay R. Schrand. Our priorities need to be reconsidered. Wouldn't it be better if the money remained in the hands of those who earned it to buy legitimate goods and services? The right thing to do is decline to participate in the tobacco settlement. And in fairness, the accumulated funds ought to be returned to those who smoke. Ireland: The Smoker's Dilemma. By John Mallon. Circumstances have contrived to put smokers in a very awkward situation today. Due to persistent professional lobbying by the various arms of Public Health, cigarettes in Ireland cost twice the European average from all the legal outlets. However, as is the way of these things, the criminal fraternity have seen their opportunity and they would appear to have ridden to the rescue of the hard-pressed smoker by providing illegal cigarettes all over the country for the European average price or even below it. |
 Great recipes sent in by readers. |
Friday, September 18, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #813
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September 18, 2015 - Issue #813 "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams |
LIBERTY: An interview with Christopher Snowdon. Ben Kelly questions Christopher Snowdon on the erosion of liberty, the public health lobby, the demonisation of E-cigs and more... The attack on free speech and the attack on lifestyle freedoms are connected insofar as they are both products of a puritanical outlook. The mindset is that nobody should hear impure views or consume impure products – a clean mind and a clean body. This is creepy, to say the least. We live in an era of outraged minorities and pressure group politics. Once people see government using the law to appease vociferous special interest groups, everybody wants a piece of the action. Had your feelings hurt by unkind words on social media? We've got a law for that. Don't like the smell of tobacco smoke? We've got a law for that. The solution is to have a limited government that encourages you to grow some skin and associate with like-minded people rather than insist the whole country changes to suit your preferences. Unfortunately, there is a great temptation for people to see one group get special privileges and demand special privileges for themselves.
HTML Cybersecurity. If you think that IP address, cookies and HTTP headers are the only factors used to uniquely identify and track users around the web… you are terribly wrong! New, modern fingerprinting techniques rely on multiple factors. Sign petitions to the German Parliament. Unfortunately the chances of getting that much support from German vapers alone is a pipe dream. Fortunately, EVERYBODY may support such a petition. Actually, getting a lot of international support could cause quite a stir by itself, since that usually doesn't happen. 
At 111, Woman to get reward for 'a healthy lifestyle. Consolacion typically eats vegetables and fish. Her children do not want her to eat meat but sometimes she asks for chicken or pork. Her only vice, her daughter said, is smoking rolled-up tobacco leaves during her free time.
How 'Big Pharma' bamboozled Brussels. Pharmaceutical companies spend tens of millions of euros on lobbyists every year to ensure "privileged access" to decision-makers in Brussels, according to a major new report that lifts the lid on their influence on EU drugs and health-care policy. Rachel Tansey, CEO researcher and author of the report, said: "The large-scale efforts of big pharmaceutical companies to mould EU policy to their own commercial benefit and their privileged access to EU decision-makers is deeply worrying. "Strong measures are needed to avoid capture of EU health policy by big pharma, beginning with full transparency over industry lobbying and ending of privileged access." Mortality Statistics. It is worth looking at what has been happening to lung cancer deaths. I remind you to look at the female charts above. Since 1970, progressively fewer females have smoked. That is over a period of 45 years (1970 to 2015). And yet LC deaths among females have grown and grown. Lies upon lies upon lies. CASAA: Calls to Action. Read about the newest calls to action, and search for actions by State. AND The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA) is collecting success-story testimonials from smokers who used smoke-free alternatives to quit or reduce their smoking. The testimonials are posted on this public web page for everyone to see. |
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Sunday, September 13, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #812
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September 13, 2015 - Issue #812 "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha |
EPA proposes new rules for pharmaceutical wastes that qualify as RCRA hazardous wastes. The Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA" or the "Agency") signed a proposed rule that would establish special management standards for pharmaceutical wastes that are classified as hazardous wastes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act ("RCRA"). The new standards would include separate requirements for healthcare facilities and pharmaceutical reverse distributors, such as rules for storage, labeling, recordkeeping, reporting, and off-site shipment. The Proposed Rule would also conditionally exempt hazardous waste pharmaceuticals that qualify as controlled substances under the rules of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration ("DEA"), add new provisions for hazardous waste pharmaceuticals from households, and amend the requirements for residues of hazardous waste pharmaceuticals in containers. It requests comments on amending the acute hazardous waste listing for low-concentration nicotine products, and on a potential strategy for listing additional pharmaceutical wastes as hazardous.
EPA withholds mine spill documents from Congress. A congressional committee blasted the Environmental Protection Agency today for blocking release of documents related to the Gold King mine disaster, which poured deadly chemicals into the largest source of drinking water in the West. They Live, We Sleep: A Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy. There's the world we see (or are made to see) and then there's the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media. Conspiracy to Tell the Truth. Abby Martin talks to Lance deHaven-Smith, Florida State University professor and author of 'Conspiracy Theory in America', about some the US' most controversial events and how labeling truth-seekers as 'conspiracy theorists' damages democracy. UK surveillance "worse than 1984," says new UN privacy chief. World needs a "Geneva convention" for the Internet to safeguard personal data. Joseph Cannataci, has called the UK's oversight of surveillance "a rather bad joke at its citizens’ expense," and said that the situation regarding privacy is "worse" than anything George Orwell imagined in his novel 1984. There are four main tasks he has set himself: drawing up a universal law on surveillance; tackling the business models of the big Internet companies; defining what "privacy" exactly entails; and raising awareness of these issues among the public. 
Robots Will Steal Our Jobs: But they'll give us new ones. At The Dusseldorf airport, robotic valet parking is now reality. You step out of your car. You press a button on a touch screen. And then a machine lifts your car off the ground, moving all three tons of it into a kind of aerial parking bay. Built by a German company called Serva Transport, the system saves you time. It saves garage space, thanks to those carefully arranged parking spots. And it's a sign of so many things to come.
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Why a bag of heroin costs less than a pack of cigarettes. For cigarettes, the price is largely about taxes. They are a reliable revenue source for governments at various levels (addicted people will often pay what they have to), are considered a method of preventing young people from taking up the habit and can push some smokers to quit. So some states have loaded heavy taxes on that little pack of cigarettes. Now most of the heroin on U.S. streets is from Mexico, Moses said, and despite the efforts of the DEA and other law enforcement agencies, there is plenty of it, which keeps the price down despite the seemingly insatiable demand. The DEA is seizing more and working better with those other agencies, Moses said, but so far that hasn't resulted in higher prices.
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Tuesday, September 01, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #811
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September 4, 2015 - Issue #811 "Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside." - Mark Twain |
Butter unlikely to harm health, but margarine could be deadly. Saturated fat does not increase the risk of stroke, heart disease, diabetes or early death, a study has shown. Saturated fat found in butter, meat or cream is unlikely to kill you, but margarine just might, new research suggests. Although traditionally dieticians have advised people to cut down on animal fats, the biggest ever study has shown that it does not increase the risk of stroke, heart disease or diabetes. However trans-fats, found in processed foods like margarine raises the risk of death by 34 per cent.
Beijing Enrolls Anti-smoking Volunteers. Nearly ten thousands volunteers will be mobilized to help the enforcement of a blanket smoking ban. Authorities in the city are encouraging more people to join the anti-smoking team to ease the shortage of law enforcement personnel. The committee is now soliciting designs for an anti-smoking badge. Volunteers will wear the newly-designed badges to identify themselves in the future. Court Declares Air Fresheners, Pro-Police Stickers as Reasonable Suspicion for Cops to Pull You Over. The ruling upholds the idea that police officers can profile and detain people who aren't actually committing any crimes. The ruling stems from a 2011 Texas court case in which a couple was pulled over for having rosaries hanging from the rearview mirror, as well as a few air fresheners, and a DARE sticker on the back of the vehicle. This ruling upholds the idea that police officers can profile and detain people who aren't actually committing any crimes. Police already profile people according to a number of different factors, and now they have confirmation that their tactics are legally acceptable. Drone drops heroin, marijuana and tobacco into Ohio prison yard. "Upon reviewing the cameras, it was determined that a drone passed over the recreation yards immediately before the fight began," the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said in an incident report. Last year, a drone was used to try to smuggle phones, marijuana and tobacco into a South Carolina maximum security prison, but it crashed outside the facility's walls. CVS banned tobacco. Now its sales are hurting. General merchandise sales tumbled nearly 8% last quarter. Sales at CVS Health are getting "smoked." Conlumino analyst Stephen Ward believes that while the smoke ban was a "sensible move" for CVS's brand, it has come at a cost. "It has most certainly affected sales both directly, and indirectly, through the reduction in impulse purchases that tobacco customers made," Ward wrote in a report. AK: Mat-Su mayor vetoes just-passed tax on e-cigarettes. "We may have done the right thing but I have been contacted by numerous people in the business who did not know this legislation was about E cigarettes," DeVilbiss wrote in remarks included with his veto notice. The legislation's title didn't indicate the specifics on e-cigarette taxation, he said. "I believe we would have more balanced testimony on this issue if it were to be retitled and re-advertised with a public hearing," he said. |
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