Tag Archives: regulatory affairs

The Pfizer-Allergan Merger Uses a Tax Trick That Lets US Companies Stash Billions Overseas

by BurtonStrehlow Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Earlier today, the pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Allergan announced a merger worth $160 billion. There’s a wrinkle to this deal between the makers of Viagra and Botox: It’s being facilitated by a controversial tax trick known as an inversion, which lets American companies move their headquarters abroad, avoiding the IRS while keeping executives stateside. If it goes through, the Pfizer-Allergan agreement will be the largest tax inversion ever.

Hillary Clinton has already criticized the pharma deal and has called for “cracking down on inversions that erode our tax base.” In the past, President Barack Obama has slammed inversions as unpatriotic. His administration and congressional Democrats estimate that tax inversions will result in nearly $20 billion in lost taxes through 2024.

Inversions have been around since the early ’80s, when a tax lawyer masterminded a move known as the “Panama Scoot”. Since then, more than 100 companies have renounced their American citizenship. Here’s where they went:

And inversions are just one of many ways US companies stash earnings abroad. Between 2008 and 2013, American firms had more than $2.1 trillion in profits held overseas—that’s as much as $500 billion in unpaid taxes.

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The Pfizer-Allergan Merger Uses a Tax Trick That Lets US Companies Stash Billions Overseas

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The Government Just Made Prison a Little Less Terrible

by StephanWormald Posted on October 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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For the families and friends of inmates, hearing the sound of a loved one’s voice can be an unaffordable luxury, with phone companies sometimes charging up to $14 per minute for calls from correctional facilities. The Federal Communications Commission took a step to change that today, voting to approve new rules on the rates companies can charge for inmates’ in-state calls.

The rules close a loophole created in 2013, when the FCC limited rates on interstate calls to 21 cents per minute but did not regulate in-state calls. The commission will now cap the cost of prepaid in-state calls from state and federal prisons at 11 cents a minute. County jails will use a tiered system, with calls from the smallest jails costing the most (22 cents a minute) and calls from the biggest jails costing the least (14 cents a minute).

The new rules also ban companies from charging a flat rate for calls, phase down collect call rates, and eliminate most of the add-on charges like payment and billing fees, which right now can bump up the cost of a call by 40 percent. Additionally, the rules increase the access to calling services for people with hearing or speech disabilities.

Industry giants like GTL and Securus have fought the move, and many have introduced exorbitantly priced video visitation services that have replaced in-person visits in some places.

“This system has preyed on our most vulnerable for far too long,” FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn told the Washington Post. “Families are being further torn apart and the cycle of poverty is being perpetuated.”

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The Government Just Made Prison a Little Less Terrible

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Here’s How Much Pollution Volkswagen’s Smog Scandal Produced

by RebekahCanipe03 Posted on September 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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The story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Volkswagen isn’t going to get away with this. You don’t (allegedly!) fake emissions data for a few million cars and just walk away. But what the German automaker’s punishment will be, and how much it’s going to hurt—those are still open questions.

The final decision will be up to lawyers at the US Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice. That latter agency has opened a criminal probe into the company’s (alleged!) emissions software tampering shenanigans. But based on precedent and the outlines of what Volkswagen actually seems to have done, we can make a few predictions.

If US officials absolutely throw the book at VW, EPA rules stipulate a maximum fine of $37,000 per affected car. At 482,000 cars on American roads, that comes to $18 billion. But according to attorneys who work on these kind of cases, that number is way too high for what’ll actually happen. The biggest fine of this kind to date was $1.2 billion, a criminal penalty that Toyota paid in 2014 for concealing information about faulty ignition switches that triggered sudden accelerations.

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Here’s How Much Pollution Volkswagen’s Smog Scandal Produced

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Health Insurance Companies Are Even More Horrible If You’re Trans

by LucilleMickle Posted on September 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed new rules to crack down on pervasive health care discrimination against transgender men and women. The draft rules address forms of discrimination that were banned years ago on paper but remain a constant feature in many transgender individuals’ dealings with doctors and insurance companies—from being refused basic services such as blood tests to not being reimbursed for health care screenings such as Pap smears or prostate exams.

If approved, the rules would force many health care providers and insurers across the country to provide transgender patients with the same medical treatments and level of care they provide to nontransgender people—parity that most insurers never even approach.

In a recent survey of transgender men and women by the National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 19 percent of people polled reported that someone refused them medical care because of their gender identity. Twenty-eight percent had postponed medical care because of discrimination, and half reported that they had to explain transgender health issues to their own doctors. These practices have contributed to disproportionately negative health outcomes for transgender people compared with the general population, such as staggering rates of depression, suicide, and HIV.

A series of actions at the federal level to end such discrimination did little to change the reality for most transgender patients. When it passed in 2010, the Affordable Care Act included a provision that explicitly barred many providers from sex discrimination. In 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services clarified that sex discrimination included discrimination against transgender patients on the basis of gender identity. A federal court in Minnesota backed up that interpretation in March this year, giving transgender people the ability to sue. But states still have broad authority to determine what actually constitutes discrimination—leaving a substantial loophole when it comes to enforcing protections.

The rules proposed last Thursday do not compel insurers to cover the medical components of the transition process, such as hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery. But Mara Keisling, the founder and director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, stresses that health care discrimination goes far beyond transition treatments. It can be as simple as “access to hospital rooms,” says Keisling. “Being placed with a roommate of the wrong sex.” Transgender patients have reported being forced to undergo a pelvic exam when going to the doctor for a sore throat or being grilled at length about their gender identity and sexual history when seeking treatment for a broken arm. Keisling adds that insurance companies routinely refuse transgender men and women sex-specific preventive care—such as mammograms or prostate exams. These rules would force insurers to cover whatever preventive services a doctor finds necessary, regardless of what gender is listed in the patient’s medical history.

Thirty-seven-year-old Seth Marlow’s medical history reads like a catalog of such abuses. Marlow works in health care IT and is well connected in transgender advocacy circles. But even he has struggled to get basic medical care. At one point, Marlow says, he was unable to have routine blood work done because a doctor he visited said his Christian faith prevented him from treating Marlow. His previous insurance company refused to pay for a fertility clinic to extract and freeze his eggs—which was one of the insurer’s covered benefits—seemingly because he identified as a man.

“As much as there’s this great transgender tipping point,” Marlow says. “I still can’t get health care.”

Part of his problems stem from the fact that until this year, the Obama administration did not define what discrimination specifically means. That definition was originally left up to the states, and only a handful have applied the protections in the Affordable Care Act to transgender people.

Marlow now lives in Virginia, a state that has not enacted any of these protections. The health care plan he purchased on the Obamacare exchanges routinely denies him coverage for hormone therapy, even though the insurer covers the same hormone treatments for other, nontransgender patients. More recently, Marlow’s insurer refused to cover his annual pelvic exam and pap smear. In a September letter that Marlow shared with Mother Jones, his insurer suggested he contact his state legislator if he was unhappy with Virginia law.

“I’ve spent probably 10 years of my life fighting these exclusions,” he says. “On paper, I’m protected. But in practice, I’m getting blown off and shut down at every turn.”

Most civil rights advocates point out that these actions by insurance companies are already illegal under the Affordable Care Act, and when such cases go to court, they are usually settled in favor of transgender litigants. But legal action is time-consuming, costly, and undertaken when there are no other options. “After they announced the rule, I went to our Facebook page,” Keisling says. “And person after person was saying, well that’s great, but I doubt it will help me.”

Marlow is also skeptical that the proposed rules will reduce health care discrimination, given that many rules were already in place and not enforced. “I’m so jaded and so tired that it’s hard to believe this is going to make any difference,” Marlow continues. “There’s a little progress. But it’s painfully, gruelingly slow.”

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Health Insurance Companies Are Even More Horrible If You’re Trans

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I Hung Out With the Prisoners Who Fight California’s Wildfires

by AmadoMcfall Posted on August 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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On the main road through Lower Lake, a town of 1,294 people in the heart of Northern California’s Lake County, spray-painted signs reading, “THANK YOU FIREFIGHTERS!” hang from fences and windows. Over the past month, the town, just north of Napa’s vineyards and south of the forests of Mendocino, has seen two of the biggest fires in the state’s recent history decimate roughly 70,00 acres of land.

The fires are mostly out now, but in recent media coverage of them, a surprising statistic came out: More than 30 percent of California’s wildfire fighters are state prisoners—low-level felons who volunteered to spend their sentences doing the manual labor of forest fire prevention and response rather than remaining behind bars.

The roughly 4,000 inmate firefighters receive a sentence reduction and $1 per hour while fighting fires, saving the state $80 million per year. After passing a physical exam and going through the same two-week training course that civilian firefighters do, they’re sent to one of 44 “fire camps” across the state—barracks-style quarters that serve as a home base from which to fight fires. Last week, I went to check out the camp in Lower Lake, called Konocti Camp.

A “thank you” sign in front of a Lower Lake sandwich shop. All photos by Julia Lurie

Konocti Camp’s yurts, where inmates who traveled from other camps slept during the Rocky and Jerusalem fires.

The first thing I noticed about Konocti was that it doesn’t feel like a normal prison. There are no fences or barbed wire around the perimeter, which separates the camp from nearby vineyards. Inmates wander freely within the camp during their leisure time; they line up to be counted every two hours. There’s an outdoor gym area, a rec room, an arts and crafts room (complete with hand saws), and a garden that grows much of the cafeteria’s produce. When there’s a big fire nearby, inmates from other fire camps come to stay, sleeping in yurts spread across the fields.

Escape attempts are exceedingly rare; prisoners know that if they misbehave, they’ll be sent back to a typical prison. “I’m trying to do everything right to stay here,” one inmate told me. (That said, attempts do happen. Last week, a juvenile in a similar program in Washington shot himself with a stolen gun after escaping from a fire camp.)

Konocti camp commander Jeff Auzenne worked for more than a decade as a state prison guard before coming to Konocti. “Inside the walls, you don’t really see a difference in these guys as far as their attitudes, and who you can help and who you can’t help,” he says. “Here, you see a lot of potential in these guys, and you can tell the guys you can really help.”

Inmates work out during their free time.

â&#128;&#139;Inmates line up to be counted at noon.

The fires have been so extreme this year that inmates from other states have come to help fight them. Above, inmates from a Nevada fire crew wait to hear if they will stay at camp or move to another fire.

Inmates are divided into fire teams, groups of about 15 people who live and work together. When fighting an active fire, the teams rotate through 24-hour shifts, primarily cutting “fire lines,” or four-foot-wide trails of dirt through vegetation on the edge of the fire to contain the blaze. They use hand tools and typically go where bulldozers can’t—which is to say, on steep inclines and dense terrain.

Members each have roles named after the tools they use, from the “saw,” who cuts down vegetation with a chainsaw, to the “Pulaskis,” who break down the wood with Pulaski pickaxes. At the camp, the teams are supervised by prison guards, but at fires, they’re overseen by Cal Fire captains. “It’s more unity here than it would be in the yard because we’ve gotta work together,” says Norbert Wilson, in charge of a Pulaski. “It’s kind of a brother bond.”

Norbert Wilson, second from the left on the top row, is in charge of cutting up vegetation with a pickaxe.

I was surprised by how few black inmates I saw, given that African Americans make up 30 percent of the prison population in California. Bill, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, says the agency doesn’t keep track of the racial breakdown of the camps because it changes so often. “I’ve never paid much attention to the ethnic background of the firefighters when I’ve been at a camp,” he wrote in an email. “Their ability and willingness to do the job is the most influential factor in who is there…Remember, they all volunteer.”

From camp, I tagged along with a fire crew as they worked through the afternoon in a spot near the recent fires, doing fire prevention work. They completed tasks like widening roads or cutting away dry vegetation from particularly risky areas.

A hill in Lake county that was scorched by the Rocky Fire earlier this month.

Each fire team has at least one chainsaw to cut down vegetation. While working, crews are overseen by fire captains, not prison guards.

Inmate firefighters cut down a dead tree.

Inmates hand dead vegetation down the fire team line.

Inmates stand in line while sipping Gatorade at the end of the work day.

The work, both on active fires and on a normal prevention day, is exhausting and unrelenting. “For my first fire, it took us three and half hours, switchbacks, to the top of the mountain,” says Robert Gabriel, an inmate from East Los Angeles. “Once we got there, it was just torching.” The chief told them they could take a quick nap if they wanted, but Gabriel thought, “I’m not even gonna close my eyes, man!” He adds, “There are times where it’s like, ‘Man, did I really sign up for this?'”

Still, the inmates I spoke with unanimously said they would rather be at fire camp than in a typical prison. “Not having the locked door, and being able to go out and play pool, shoot hoops—it’s just a closer step to freedom,” says Gabriel.

Inmates Robert Gabriel and Samuel Serna take a break from their work.

Some inmates work full time in a handful of coveted, camp-only positions—cooking, cleaning, and otherwise keeping up the camp. Keith Collier, an inmate from Hayward, California, works in the camp’s wastewater treatment plant, doing a similar job to what he did before he was sent to prison for five years for a DUI. “I was able to continue my career here,” he tells me. “That’s the whole reason I came to this camp.”

Keith Collier works in the camp’s wastewater treatment plant. He’ll return to his family in Hayward, California, next week.

Rudy Quintanilla is the head gardener at the camp, growing a variety of produce used in the kitchen, from tomatoes and peppers to melons and pumpkins. “I’ve been in the camp so long that I know what type of tomato calls for what type of recipe,” he says, showing me the camp’s many varieties of tomatoes.

A landscaper before he went to prison, also for a DUI, Quintanilla says he plans to keep up landscaping when he leaves.

Rudy Quintanilla is in charge of the garden, which cuts the camp’s food costs.

Inmates sit down for hot meals at breakfast and dinner, and the food comes in massive servings to keep them energized. Food is notoriously better at camp than in normal prisons.

California inmates serve dinner to the fire team from Nevada.

When a camp expands during a fire, inmates eat outside.

Benjamin, a cook at the camp, preps for tonight’s meal: fried chicken and corn.

When I met Benjamin, the head cook, he was preparing for the night’s dinner: fried chicken, corn on the cob, potato gratin, and ranch-style beans. Benjamin is in prison for burglary; before his incarceration, he was a chef at a Las Vegas casino.

Mid-conversation, he turned to the guard giving me a tour and smiled. “I got good news,” he said. “I’m going home, man! In a month.”

“Good for you,” said Commander Auzenne, who’d been giving me a tour. “Bad for us, good for him.”

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I Hung Out With the Prisoners Who Fight California’s Wildfires

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California Just Issued Its First Fine for Using Too Much Water

by Chun85Q30997584 Posted on July 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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California’s Water Resources Control Board proposed a $1.5 million fine today for a farming district’s unauthorized use of water—the first such fine in the state’s four-year drought. The Board alleged that the Byron-Bethany Irrigation District, a region serving 160 farmers just east of San Francisco, illegally diverted nearly 700 million gallons of water over the course of two weeks in June.

Byron-Bethany is one of about 5,000 water-rights holders notified this year that there isn’t enough water to pump from lakes and rivers, and it’s illegal to divert water after receiving such notifications. In response, several water users, including Byron-Bethany, have sued the state for cutting off its water supply.

“We will vigorously defend our rights,” said Rick Gilmore, general manager of the district, to the San Jose Mercury News last month. “All our sweet corn and tomatoes—they won’t make it to harvest. Almonds and cherries will suffer damage,” he said. “They’ll lose the water they need for July and August.”

The proposed fine, which the district will likely contest in a coming hearing, is the first fine sought by the Board under a new structure in which water rights holders can be penalized for past unauthorized use of water, even if they have stopped diverting since. But Byron-Bethany probably isn’t alone; Andrew Tauriainen, a lawyer for the state’s Division of Water Rights, says, “It’s highly likely that additional enforcement actions will follow in weeks and months ahead.”

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California Just Issued Its First Fine for Using Too Much Water

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Martin O’Malley to Wall Street: "I Will Not Let Up on You’"

by KarinaEanes Posted on July 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Martin O’Malley amped up his effort Thursday to win over the Democratic Party’s left wing—to out-Sanders Bernie Sanders—and become the progressive alterative to presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, releasing an antagonistic open letter to “Wall Street’s Megabanks.”

The former Maryland governor’s desired niche in the Democratic field is currently occupied by Sanders, the Vermont senator and a self-described Democratic socialist who is drawing massive crowds and surging in the polls. Sanders and O’Malley have been duking it out with a series of policy proposals aimed at outflanking each other on the political left, with O’Malley the underdog in this two-man face-off.

Yesterday, in response to Sanders’ pitch for tuition-free college, O’Malley came out for debt-free college. Today, O’Malley’s brandished his aggressively worded missive to Wall Street.

“So here’s the bad news—for you: As President, I have no plans to let up on you,” O’Malley wrote in his open letter, circulated to supporters and reporters, along with his plan for financial reform. “I’ll work tirelessly to eliminate the unique danger posed by the handful of too-big-to-fail banks. And while I’m doing that, I’ll finally bring real enforcement and oversight to the federal government—to agencies and departments like the Department of Justice, Securities Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, Commodity Futures Trading Commission—so that they start doing the job the American people expect them to do and stop sitting on their hands.”

O’Malley’s confrontational approach to Wall Street isn’t just about Sanders. It’s also a challenge to Clinton, who has longstanding ties to Wall Street and a history of taking large speaking fees from big banks. And though Clinton praises Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, she hasn’t adopted that progressive champion’s favorite Wall Street reform policies.

Read the full O’Malley letter below:

Open Letter to Wall Street’s Megabanks

As you may have read, I’ve expressed grave concern about the state of our national economy, especially as it relates to the behavior of a select group of financial institutions on Wall Street—the institutions that you work for and represent. I have called for significant structural and accountability reforms to prevent another economic crash and protect hard-working families from losing their jobs, homes, and life savings once again.

Most of our financial system works quite well. Of the almost 6,500 banks in our country, most of which work hard every day to serve their communities, just 29 have more than $100 billion in assets and only four have more than $1 trillion in assets. The high-risk, reckless, and illegal activities of your megabanks were the primary cause of the 2008 crash, which caused the worst recession since The Great Depression, and cost the American economy an estimated $14 trillion to $22 trillion.

I know that many of you have tried to dismiss and undermine my calls for stronger reforms as “anti-capitalist.” Let me be clear- the ongoing reckless behavior of your megabanks isn’t capitalism—it’s the antithesis of it. True capitalism requires a level playing field on which everyone plays by the same set of rules. True capitalism requires competition. True capitalism means that just as businesses and banks can succeed—they can also fail.

Today, your—too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-manage, and too-big-to-jail—megabanks pose an enormous risk to the financial system, the economy, and American families. They are so big and so interconnected with the entire financial system that the failure of one or more of them could cause the collapse of the entire U.S. economy.

After several misguided deregulatory measures taken in the 1990’s, your handful of megabanks went from having assets of approximately 15% of our country’s GDP to now having assets of nearly 65% of our GDP. As your megabanks grew in size, who gained from it? Credit card fees didn’t get smaller. Mortgage rates didn’t go down. The median wages of Americans certainly didn’t increase. The only tangible gain we’ve seen from your institutions’ explosion in size is your ability to concentrate unprecedented power and wealth in the hands of your executives and to acquire the guarantee that all of your risky bets will be covered by taxpayers.

Now, because your institutions are so large, so leveraged, and pose such a grave threat to our economy, you don’t face the same rules of the free market that apply to everyone else. If your bets go bad, you don’t face bankruptcy—taxpayers bail you out. When things go well, the upside is all yours and you get to cash in exorbitant bonuses. This violates the very principle of free market capitalism.

For similar reasons, both your megabanks—and your executives—have been somehow classified as too big to prosecute and too big to jail. Exacerbating the problem, our financial regulation system is defined by conflicts of interest and a lucrative revolving door. Former financial executives are hired to regulate their former colleagues and, when they leave for government, they’re given golden parachutes. Then, they turn right around and return to the firms they were supposed to be regulating.

All of this explains why, when laws are broken, you and your institutions get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist—fines paid by shareholders that you can write off as nothing more than business expenses. No admission of guilt, no one faces jail time, everybody keeps their jobs — back to bonuses as usual.

As President, I would end this double standard of justice. It is bad for our economy, and it is bad for our country.

A strong American economy depends on a strong, financial industry that plays by the rules. And among the greatest victims of your megabanks have been the thousands of community banks that are the backbone of our economy. These banks provide the financing for the American Dream of homes, businesses, educations, and secure retirements. Yet they’re forced to compete on an un-level playing field—one where they bear the brunt of declining credit and wages—and where megabanks are rewarded with subsidies and bailouts.

So here’s the bad news—for you: As President, I have no plans to let up on you. I’ll work tirelessly to eliminate the unique danger posed by the handful of too-big-to-fail banks. And while I’m doing that, I’ll finally bring real enforcement and oversight to the federal government—to agencies and departments like the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, Commodity Futures Trading Commission—so that they start doing the job the American people expect them to do and stop sitting on their hands.

If you—and your megabanks—which we, the American taxpayer, saved want to begin to restore the confidence in your leadership, you need to start by saying two things: “we’re sorry” and “thank you.”

Then, you have to do the right things: stop your war on financial reform, start following the law, and end your highest-risk, most dangerous activities so that your megabanks are in fact no longer too-big-to-fail.

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Martin O’Malley to Wall Street: "I Will Not Let Up on You’"

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Congress Doesn’t Think Agricultural Sustainability Has Anything to Do With Your Health

by MichellBidmead Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Every five years, the US government revisits its Dietary Guidelines—suggestions for how Americans should eat. The guidelines won’t legally require you to, say, eat an apple a day, but they do affect things like agricultural subsidies and public school lunches, so they’re fairly influential.

When the committee tasked with making scientific recommendations for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines released its report this year, it ruffled some feathers. For the first time it included concerns about the environmental issues linked to certain dietary patterns and agricultural practices—for example, how eating less meat and more plant-based foods is “more health promoting and is associated with a lesser environmental impact.” Or that assuring food security might rely on creating agricultural practices that “reduce environmental impacts and conserve resources.”

Some lobbyists and politicians, especially those who pad their pockets with cash from Big Food and Big Ag, weren’t too happy about these suggestions. As I’ve written in the past, the suggestion that plant-based diets might be healthier for people and the planet messes with the meat industry’s bottom line, so why would they back it? In letters sent to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack over the past few months, industry groups have tried to argue that sustainability issues do not fall within the scope of the Dietary Guidelines. One letter from the National Cattleman’s Beef Association argued that the advisory committee “clearly does not have the background or expertise to evaluate the complex relationship between food production and the dietary needs of a growing American and international population.”

The House Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, which accepted at least $1.4 million from the food industry in 2013 and 2014, apparently caved to these complaints. It recently stuck a rider in its 2016 Agricultural Appropriations bill that would A) explicitly prohibit the upcoming Dietary Guidelines from mentioning anything other than diet and nutrient intake, and B) force the guidelines to only rely on scientific evidence that has been rated “Grade 1: Strong” by the Department of Agriculture. Politico reported on Thursday that a similar Senate agriculture appropriations rider would force any advice in the Dietary Guidelines to be “solely nutritional and dietary in nature.”

In an unprecedented move, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has shot back with a letter of its own. Health and food systems should be more closely related in the government’s eyes, the committee argued. “Future food insecurity is predictable without attention to the safety, quality, cost, and sustainability of the food supply,” the letter stated, adding that “the US health and public health systems are burdened with preventable health problems.” In other words, to narrow the reach of the Dietary Guidelines is to ignore the connection between things like exercise and obesity, for instance, or agricultural pesticide use and disease. To read more of the DGAC’s arguments, see the full letter here.

Expect the finalized Dietary Guidelines late this year. In the meantime, it looks like the DGAC isn’t giving up the battle for a more holistic national framework for how people eat. They certainly have Food Politics author Marion Nestle on their side; as she summarizes on her blog:

Members of the DGAC were asked to review and consider the science of diet and health and did so. They reported what they believe the science says. Some segments of the food industry didn’t like the science so they are using the political system to fight back. That some members of Congress would go along with this is shameful.

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Congress Doesn’t Think Agricultural Sustainability Has Anything to Do With Your Health

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Marijuana Research Just Got a Green Light From the Obama White House

by GOAScottnuzuz Posted on June 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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The White House today lifted a longstanding restriction on medical marijuana research, giving a green light to a growing group of mainstream scientists who are interested in investigating the potential health benefits of pot. Such research will no longer have to undergo review by the Public Health Service, a process that is ostensibly meant to ensure the use of scientifically valid clinical trials, but in practice has served as a barrier to launching studies. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, and even opponents of legalization, had called for the requirement to be lifted.

“This announcement is a pretty big deal,” says Christopher Brown, a spokesperson for Americans for Safe Access, a group that advocates for access to pot for medical research. “You have a lot of interest in experimental research on medical cannabis and this shows that you are starting to see policies aligned with that.”

The announcement comes a few months after US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy signaled the federal government’s shifting thinking on medical pot, telling CBS This Morning that preliminary data shows that “marijuana can be helpful” for some medical conditions.

Still, Americans for Safe Access is calling for the feds to loosen restrictions even more. Numerous startup companies are interested in capitalizing on the medical benefits of pot, but scientists who want to use marijuana for research currently must obtain it from a DEA-approved grow facility, a process that can take a year or longer if they need specific cannabis strains. And marijuana remains classified under Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, a category reserved for drugs that supposedly have no medical benefit.

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Marijuana Research Just Got a Green Light From the Obama White House

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No Wonder Teens Are Huffing Nicotine

by IvaHartigan Posted on April 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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You thought Big Tobacco was on the wane in the United States?

(Insert cartoon villain voice:) “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa!”

Not. Friggin’. Likely. In fact, the domestic tobacco industry is on the rebound thanks to its heavy investment in smoking “alternatives”—a.k.a. e-cigarettes, a.k.a. nicotine-delivery devices marketed in a variety of kid-friendly flavors. (Marketing flavored tobacco cigarettes has been banned since 2009.)

Kevin had a post on Thursday about the soaring numbers of kids who’ve tried e-cigs. On Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially announced the results of a new CDC study in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Control.

From 2011 to 2013, the researchers reported, the number of middle- and high-school students using e-cigs tripled. In 2013, more than 250,000 kids who had never smoked tobacco reported using e-cigarettes, and 44 percent of those kids said they had “intentions” of trying regular cigarettes in the next year. (About 1 in 5 American adults currently smoke.) Not surprisingly, kids who had more exposure to tobacco advertising were more likely to say they intended to try smoking.

You’ll often hear vaping proponents argue that e-cigs help smokers kick the tobacco habit, thereby saving lives. And that may be true: Inhaling tobacco smoke, which still kills more than 400,000 Americans every year, is almost certainly more deadly than huffing nicotine vapors.

The one group you won’t hear the smoking cessation argument from is e-cig manufacturers. That, ironically, is because products intended to help people quit tobacco products are regulated far more strictly than the tobacco products themselves. The same goes for drug-delivery devices, which is why manufacturers fought very hard to make certain the FDA didn’t put e-cigarettes in that category.

Not that the agency didn’t try. The FDA initially sought to regulate e-cigs as drug-delivery devices, for what else could they be? But the manufacturers promptly sued, and were handed a huge win. Tobacco-friendly judges bought the industry’s argument that, under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, any product that contains nicotine derived from tobacco and makes no therapeutic claims must be regulated as a tobacco product—which makes it, presto, not a drug delivery device.

Just think about how crazy this is: Nicotine is highly addictive. At low doses it’s a stimulant, at higher doses a serious poison. (The tobacco plant and other nightshades actually produce it as an insecticide, and it’s sold for that use, too, with a stringent warning label.) If nicotine were sold as medicine—which it can’t be because it has no medical value—you couldn’t just buy it at the corner store in a dozen alluring flavors. Yet because the manufacturers make no medical claims, they can do what they want. Never mind that the 2009 law was written before e-cigarettes were invented.

Ah, screw it. Just give me the Piña Colada.

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No Wonder Teens Are Huffing Nicotine

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