Free Republic

When it comes to tobacco control, it often seems that the policy is decided first and the science is produced as an afterthought. Since the lion's shares of the anti-smoking policies we see today were planned as far back as the 1970s, it is a remarkable coincidence that scientific evidence for each of them appeared at regular and timely intervals in the intervening years. This is something that The Economist gently hinted at in a recent review of a book called Merchants of Doubt: ~snip~ Secondhand smoke is old news in California these days, of course. These days, if you're...

BENTON HARBOR - Howard Weyers believes that the bottom line for health care costs depends on what's happening with the waist lines of employees. Or the lungs, or any other organ that could fail due to misuse or neglect and cost an employer money. And he believes those employers should be encouraging workers to live healthier lifestyles and aggressively monitoring what they do inside - and outside - of the workplace. "If we do nothing about personal health, we will do nothing with cost," Weyers, a health benefit consultant based near Lansing, told about 40 people Friday at his seminar...

Personal responsibility just got thrown out the window — again — thanks to a nanny state congressman with hopes of saving ourselves and others from — you guessed it — us! Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) on Thursday, June 10, successfully attached an amendment to the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010 that would “authorize $8 million in annual funding for five years for the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) program.” The DADSS technology proposed in the ROADS SAFE amendment will likely lead to alcohol-sensing devices becoming mandatory factory-installed equipment on all automobiles within the next five-to-ten years, reports...

Michael Nuzzo and his two older brothers learned from their father, Fred, the intracacies -- and hard work -- involved in making Italian pies at the New Haven pizzeria he started in 1955. All three eventually started their own restaurants. Today, a third generation of Nuzzos, Michael's three children -- ages 13, 11 and 8 -- for years have spent Friday nights and Saturdays learning the business at their father's Grand Apizza restaurant in Clinton. That is until two weeks ago, when a Connecticut Labor Department investigator -- apparently acting on an anonymous tip -- showed up May 12 at...

Rep. Kind of Wisconsin has introduced legislation that he proudly proclaims will track the body mass index (BMI) of your child from age 2-18 . . . .

There is a smoking story making the rounds here in New York. Seems the New York State Legislature has cut funding thirty-percent to its anti-smoking program. These cuts were over a three-year period. Many other programs and agencies also saw their funding reduced: the State has a large budget deficit. Among other consequences, the tighter anti-smoking budget forced a scaling back of the free nicotine-patch program. That’s not my “free”, incidentally. It arose from the fruitful imagination of one Russ Sciandra, who bills himself director of the Center for a Tobacco Free New York, a mysterious not-for-profit. We must not...

Forget secondhand smoke — smokers are officially second- class citizens. If you’re a smoker and looking for work, don’t bother sending a resume to Chattanooga’s Memorial Hospital — you’re not wanted there. The hospital says it won’t hire smokers, no matter where they might smoke or how often (or how little) they do it. Goodbye, freedom and privacy — we hardly knew you. Even nicotine gum chewers won’t be eligible to work at the hospital under this cockamamie new policy. The hospital says it will test prospective employees for nicotine along with illegal drugs…lumping smokers and crackheads together. Fail the...

img src="http://rightbias.com/News/Images/nanny-state%20250.JPG" alt="" align="right" />Since I've been otherwise occupied making a living, it's reassuring to know that my government is looking out for me. In just the last month, our tireless public servants have proposed numerous measures that will make my life better and more worry free. No longer will I have to worry about drug addicts being able to rig a urine test. The Senate is set to vote on a measure that would make it illegal to sell fake urine for the purpose of falsifying a drug test. Whew. While they're at it, Congress is also working on...

Midway through D.C.'s February Snowpocalypse, with dystopian visions dancing in my head, I rented the 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner." The movie's noir-ish picture of Los Angeles in 2019-dimly-lit and rainy, with flying cars, sexy replicants, and gruff, chain-smoking detectives-seems less prescient (and less foreboding) the closer we get to the year it depicts. As the DVD played, one thought kept distracting me: "It's so cute that they used to think you'd be allowed to smoke in the future." From a 2010 vantage point, the 21st century seems to promise an entirely different flavor of nightmare-one in which every individual...

The Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control began sending underage operatives into stores in the 1990s in an attempt to buy alcohol, usually beer. But in the past year, they began targeting another beverage: alcoholic energy drinks. The rising popularity of the drinks with teens fueled the change, said Robert Simmons Jr., an ABC special agent. They pose a special problem because they look like their non alcoholic counterparts, making them easy to slip past distracted or uninformed cashiers and fool parents and sometimes even police, he said. But with as much caffeine as several cups of coffee and twice...

Malkin’s syndicated column today hits on my point about the Census Bureau’s semi-official slogan … fill out the census so your community gets their fair share. Gotta ensure you’re in the front of the line to feed from the federal government’s teat, so fill out the census you goofball!

Scientists have finally confirmed what the rest of us have suspected for years: Bacon, cheesecake, and other delicious yet fattening foods may be addictive. A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found. Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular...

In 2008, a city planner filed a lawsuit claiming a co-worker's perfume made it challenging for her to do her job. Susan McBride filed her lawsuit under the American with Disabilities Act, because she said he co-workers' fragrances made it hard for her to breath. She was awarded $100,000. "One of the things the city is going to have to figure out is how they enforce the policy they've agreed to," said attorney John Holmquist. "The city is going to have to get involved in hygiene, I'd guess you'd say, which no employer wants to get involved in." A notice...

Is soda the new tobacco? In their critics’ eyes, producers of sugar-sweetened drinks are acting a lot like the tobacco industry of old: marketing heavily to children, claiming their products are healthy or at worst benign, and lobbying to prevent change. The industry says there are critical differences: in moderate quantities soda isn’t harmful, nor is it addictive. The problem is that at roughly 50 gallons per person per year, our consumption of soda, not to mention other sugar-sweetened beverages, is far from moderate, and appears to be an important factor in the rise in childhood obesity. This increase is...

One of the more extreme proposals floated early in the national health care debate was the idea of taxing soda and other sugary beverages. That trial balloon was almost immediately shot down by the American public, but the Obama administration is attempting to achieve, by subterfuge, soda taxes and a lot of other ways to micromanage our lives in the name of public health—whether or not ObamaCare passes. The mechanism is buried in last year’s $862-billion-and-counting stimulus bill, and works by diverting hundreds of millions of dollars that should be promoting economic growth to instead pay lobbyists to push for...

Temple University researchers create a unique program to help new moms cut down on babies' exposure to second-hand smokeIn underserved areas like North Philadelphia, existing research shows a nearly 10 percent higher smoking rate than in the general population, with a lower quit rate to boot. The consequences of this public health problem are magnified for new mothers that smoke, as they also expose their babies to the ill effects of second-hand smoke. Brad Collins, an assistant professor of public health at the College of Health Professions and Social Work, has been testing ways to improve smoking treatments in underserved...

McCain-Dorgan Bill could make nutritional supplements available only by doctor’s prescription; stifling natural product innovation. (FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.) - Ironically, in the middle of American Heart Month 2010, the U.S. Senate is weighing a proposed amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 321) that could deny freedom of access and mandate a doctor’s prescription for many dietary supplements, like purified fish oil, which could become seven times more expensive than it is today. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) have dubbed their new bipartisan bill the “Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010.” A reading...

Recent figures on both sides of the Atlantic suggest claims of an epidemic of weight-related illness are grossly exagerrated. Everyone knows The Truth about obesity: we’re getting fatter each year. Our growing girth is termed everything from the ‘pandemic of the twenty-first century’ to an ‘obesity tsunami’. But the evidence is now flooding in from both America and England that obesity is the epidemic that never was. Two studies produced by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association – one about obesity in children and adolescents,...

Remember Louise Woodward, the English Nanny convicted in part by Martha Coakley in 1998. People had very strong opinions on the case, many felt she was guilty, I always was sure she was innocent. Well I wonder if many like me missed the recent update to the story. The Prosecutions star medical expert has since reversed his opinion that convicted Woodward, based on fairly new scientific research. The article goes on to suggest that hundreds of innocent people are currently in prison for this FALSE SBS Shaken baby Syndrome. This is related to the current Coakley discussions so I share...

We have seen the previews. The film looks really awful. In fact, it may turn out to be a horror film. I’ll try my best to avoid it. But if you sit idly and allow bureaucrats to seize even more power over your life, I wish you good luck and good health. You’ll need both.