Month: June 2022

There’s something terrifying about a government so powerful that it can shut down your business overnight without even bothering to offer substantive arguments. Yet that’s what U.S. Food and Drug Administration bureaucrats just did to the e-cigarette company Juul. While Juul got a stay of execution from a court, the company is one of the many victims of the FDA’s counterproductive war on nicotine. Most of the other victims will be cigarette smokers.

I have followed the issue for several years and there is no doubt in my mind that Juul is an effective way to transition away from smoking into alternative, safer sources of nicotine. Vaping doesn’t end nicotine consumption, but it’s still a real step toward a world without cigarettes. In fact, it is now proven that e-cigarettes are more effective than traditional, FDA-approved nicotine-replacement therapies at getting smokers to quit entirely.

In its 125,000-page application to the FDA, Juul reminded the agency of more than 110 studies showing the benefits of e-cigarettes over traditional nicotine consumption. The company has also been a good team player, jumping through all the hoops thrown at it by the anti-vaping brigades. As the Reason Foundation’s Guy Bentley reminds us in the New York Daily News, “Juul complied with nearly every request made by critics including pulling its original marketing campaigns in 2016, voluntarily removing all of its non-tobacco and menthol flavors from the market in 2019, and supporting an increase in the tobacco age from 18 to 21.”

And yet the FDA has ordered all Juul e-cigarette products off the market even though its own decision features this remarkable admission: “To date, the FDA has not received clinical information to suggest an immediate hazard associated with the use of the JUUL device or JUULpods.” In other words, neither Juul’s effectiveness in turning smokers away from more dangerous products nor its success at getting some smokers to quit altogether is, for the FDA, sufficient evidence of the product’s benefit to public health.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for good arguments coming from the FDA. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Michelle Minton writes that “the FDA’s rationale that Juul products lacked sufficient toxicological evidence is confusing, given that the agency has previously approved IQOS heated tobacco products and lower-nicotine content combustible cigarettes, ‘both of which obviously have worse [toxicological] profiles than a Juul.'” She adds that “the FDA has granted marketing approval for other e-cigarette brands” despite these products being no safer.

As for concerns over kids’ nicotine use, the FDA’s decision comes at a time when Juul is no longer the most popular vaping product among young people and when vaping is becoming remarkably less popular among the young. Bentley notes, for instance, that “according to the latest National Youth Tobacco Survey, 89% of [high school age] youth don’t vape and 95% don’t vape frequently.” Meanwhile, in the Centers for Disease Control’s latest data, only 7.6 percent of high school and middle school students reported any past-month vaping, down from 27.5 percent in 2019.

Instead of applauding the improvements, the agency has continued to wage a war on nicotine. This war includes, among other measures, rules to ban vapers’ favorite flavors and reduce nicotine in cigarettes to trace amounts. However, in the absence of the most popular alternative, Juul, the FDA all but guarantees that smokers will smoke more cigarettes, turn to less-established products or even go to the black market to get their nicotine fixes.

The FDA has forgotten why it entered the battlefield in the first place. Every year in the United States, 480,000 people die due to cigarette smoking. They die of illnesses caused by the repeated inhaling of tar, an especially dangerous product of combustion. And here’s the key point: They may be smoking for the buzz of nicotine, but they don’t die from nicotine. This simple fact explains why e-cigarettes came to be. The importance of the innovation lays precisely in its ability to deliver nicotine without the combustion and tar.

All wars kill. The FDA’s war against nicotine might claim Juul, but it will just as likely claim hundreds of thousands of adults who continue to inhale tar from cigarettes thanks to the agency’s refusal to allow safer, but also appealing, alternatives. If these overzealous regulators win their battle against Juul, the only other winners will be tobacco companies, contraband dealers, and health care providers who will have to keep treating captive smokers.

COPYRIGHT 2022 CREATORS.COM.

The post The FDA's War on Juul Will Kill People appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/KPjMBao
via IFTTT

The Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade has re-focused attention on the moral principle of “My Body, My Choice,” advanced by the pro-choice movement. I agree with both the general principle, and with almost of all of its applications to the specific case of abortion. But the idea has implications that go far beyond abortion, including many of that are easier to defend and some that could potentially save large numbers of lives. It frustrates me that many who propound the principle when it comes to abortion ignore or even oppose it in other contexts. Many on the political right are also inconsistent when it comes to issues of bodily autonomy.

In this post, I explain why abortion is a relatively hard case for the “My Body, My Choice” principle. If you believe (as I do) that it nonetheless applies here, you should be even more willing to apply it in many other cases. And some of those other applications are enormously significant.

Abortion is actually a difficult case – even for libertarians and others who generally take a broad view of bodily autonomy. Political philosopher Michael Huemer and Clark Neily and Jay Schweikert of the Cato Institute have helpful discussions of the reasons why. I won’t try to go over all of their analysis. But much of it comes down to the reality that there is a plausible case that abortion involves the taking of innocent life. And if it does, that effect happens almost every time. It’s not just a marginal probablistic risk.

To be sure, libertarians and many others argue that we don’t necessarily have a moral duty to save lives whenever we can, especially not one that should be enforced by the government. Similarly, Anglo-American law holds there is no liability if you walk by a baby drowning in a lake and choose not to save her (though some philosophers and legal scholars believe there should be). But, if a fetus has a right to life comparable to that of a baby, then abortion is a harder case than the “drowning baby” scenario. In most, though not all, cases (rape is an obvious exception) the pregnant woman had a major role in putting the fetus in a position of jeopardy in the first place, by voluntarily choosing to have unprotected sex.

This makes the situation very different from one where the drowning baby was in peril for reasons having nothing to do with the person who might save it. If you threw the baby in the water, or he ended up there through your negligence, you do indeed have a legal or moral duty to save him.

I think that “my body my choice” nonetheless justifies foregoing abortion restrictions in the vast majority of situations. Primarily, that’s because I think fetuses (except perhaps in the very late stages of pregnancy) do not have a right to life comparable to that of infants. In addition, the severity of the burden imposed on pregnant women’s bodily autonomy by abortion restrictions imposes a high burden of proof on defenders of such laws. I don’t think pro-lifers have met that burden. But the issue is a genuinely hard one, despite the tendency of many on both sides to think that it’s easy.

By contrast, a large number of other restrictions on bodily autonomy are much simpler cases, at least if you believe in a strong presumption in favor of “my body, my choice.”

I listed several examples in a 2019 post on this subject. The list below includes some additions, whose importance has been highlighted by recent events:

1. Organ markets should be legalized. People should be free to sell kidneys, for example (subject, perhaps, to informed consent requirements).  If someone wants to sell a kidney, the response to prohibitionists should be: “you can’t tell her what to do with her goddamn body, ever.” Your kidney is part of your body, and the decision to sell should be your choice. As an extra bonus, legalizing such sales would save many thousands of lives.

2. Laws against prostitution should be abolished. They most definitely restrict people’s freedom to control their own bodies (both prostitutes and their customers). The prostitute’s body belongs to her, and using it for prostitution is her choice. Prostitution bans also restrict the bodily autonomy of customers. Thus, we should reject laws that punish them, while letting the prostitutes themselves go free. The “johns” own their own bodies no less than the prostitutes do. The kind of consensual sex you engage in with your body should be your choice.

3. The War on Drugs should be abolished. All of it. Not just the ban on marijuana. Its whole purpose is to restrict what sorts of substances you can put in your body. What you put in your body should be your choice. And, like the ban on organ sales, the War on Drugs harms large numbers of people, both in the US and abroad, in countries like the Phillippines and Mexico.

4. The government should not try to control people’s diets through “sin taxes,” or  restrictions on the size of sodas, and other such regulations. Here too, the goal is to restrict what we put in our bodies. If that leads to increased government spending on health care, the right solution is to restrict the subsidies, not bodily autonomy.

5. Draft registration, mandatory jury service, and all other forms of mandatory service should be abolished (if already in force) or taken off the political agenda (if merely proposed). All such policies literally expropriate people’s bodies. What work you do with your body should be your choice.

6. We should legalize and use challenge trials for testing new vaccines against deadly diseases. The resulting earlier authorization of Covid-19 vaccines might have saved many thousands of lives. And it could save many more if we permit the use of challenge trials in the future.

7. Government-imposed mask mandates and lockdowns should be forbidden, or at least there must be very strong presumptions against them. Accumulating  evidence suggests that lockdowns did little good, and that the benefits of mask mandates are also modest, at best, as indicated by the serious flaws in the study most often cited to support them. At the very least, true advocates of “my body, choice” should have a strong presumption against such measures, inasmuch as they are truly massive intrusions on bodily autonomy, at least if continued for more than very brief periods. If they can be justified at all, it can only be by overwhelming evidence of large, life-saving effects. Or at least that’s true if you have a strong commitment to “my body, my choice.”

8. People should be allowed to take experimental medical treatments not approved by government regulators. That’s especially true if the treatments have a significant chance of saving people from death or serious illness.

9. The Biden administration should drop its proposed ban on “vaping”. Respect for “my body, my choice” requires us to let people decide for themselves whether they want to consume such products or not.

Like my earlier 2019 list, the above is far from exhaustive. But it’s at least a rough indication of what truly consistent application of “my body, my choice” entails.

The organ market and challenge trial cases are especially worth highlighting. In both cases, eliminating limitations on bodily autonomy would not only expand freedom of choice, but also save enormous numbers of lives! This makes these situations far easier cases than abortion, where – as discussed above – there is a serious argument that freedom of choice entails the taking of innocent life. And yet organ markets and challenge trials get no more than a fraction of the attention and support that are focused on abortion rights.

Many of the items on the above list highlight inconsistencies by pro-choice liberals. But there is no shortage of similar inconsistency on the right. Consider, for example, conservatives who oppose mask and vaccine mandates on grounds of bodily autonomy, but strongly support the War on Drugs and laws banning prostitution.

Some will object that many of the cases described above must be ruled out because they involve restrictions on activities that are dangerous to health or safety (e.g. – prostitution, taking risky illegal drugs, and so on). If an activity is too dangerous, then government should be able to ban it in order to protect people from their own worst impulses.

But if that’s your view, you’re not really a supporter of “my body, my choice.” Rather, you believe people should only be allowed to make choices that the government (or perhaps some group of experts) deems sufficiently safe. Among other flaws, such paternalism overlooks the possibility that people may legitimately differ over the amount of risk they are willing to accept.

Another standard objection to some of the items on my list is the fear that allowing them would lead to “exploitation” of the poor. For example, the poor may face more pressure to sell organs, become prostitutes, participate in challenge trials (if participants in the latter are allowed to be paid). I have responded to this objection in some detail in previous writings on organ markets and challenge trials.

Here, I will add that the very same issue arises with abortion. After all, many abortions occur at least in part because the women who get them are poor and want to avoid further economic hardship. If we are going to bar poor people from taking risks with their bodies in order to alleviate difficult economic circumstances, that, too, entails massive deviation from “my body, my choice.”

Longtime readers may wonder whether the above is consistent with my willingness to support some types of vaccination mandates. The answer is that this is consistent with the framework outlined in my 2019 post  on this subject (written before the Covid pandemic made this a major issue):

I do not believe any right should be absolute. A great enough harm… might justify restricting virtually any liberty, if that were the only way to prevent it. But those who take the principle of bodily autonomy seriously should at least adopt a strong presumption against restrictions, and only support them in cases where there is very strong evidence both that the harm exists and that restricting liberty will solve the problem without creating comparably serious harms of its own.

I should clarify that the “great harm” in question is harm to third parties, not to the person whose autonomy is being restricted. In the case of vaccination against deadly contagious diseases, the harm prevented is potentially very great (loss of thousands of lives) and the restriction on liberty is small. In most cases, once you get the shot you can go back to your normal life very quickly, and you no longer even notice the presence of the vaccine. That’s a sharp contrast with such cases as lockdowns, mask mandates, the War on Drugs, and – yes – abortion restrictions, which impose severe constraints on liberty over long periods of time, sometimes even indefinitely.

Obviously, the case for vaccination mandates also rests on the assumptions that 1) vaccination significantly reduces disease spread (as opposed to merely protecting the vaccinated themselves), and 2) voluntary vaccination won’t be widespread enough to make compulsion unnecessary. Thus, defensible vaccination mandates are a fairly unusual case where the combination of large potential benefits and the very modest nature of the restriction on liberty, combine to overcome even a strong presumption in favor of bodily autonomy.

This post, like its predecessor, obviously cannot do justice to all the implications of “my body, my choice,” or deal with all possible case-specific arguments for restriction. Elsewhere, I have addressed some of the latter with respect to organ sales, mandatory jury service, and mandatory national service generally, among other cases.

But I hope it at least shows that many supporters of the “my body, my choice” principle should consider broadening their horizons by applying it more consistently, to a wider range of issues. Some of those issues even involve massive, glaring injustices that so far have failed to attract more than a fraction of the attention they deserve.

The post A Broader Perspective on "My Body, My Choice" appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/IX9QBGj
via IFTTT

Model legislation from the anti-abortion group National Right to Life provides a sobering look at where some prominent pro-lifers think U.S. laws should go.

The group’s vision includes a sweeping criminal enforcement apparatus targeted at people who perform abortions and entities that enable them, including website purveyors, web hosting companies, and anyone else providing abortion information.

“Police state. Very much police state. Not even subtle about it,” Thomas Lecaque, a history professor at Grand View University, commented on Twitter. “I mean seriously. Full blown surveillance state stuff.”

Model legislation is just a policy wish list, of course. But anti-abortion groups have a good track record of getting model bills proposed and enacted. And James Bopp, general counsel for National Right to Life, told CNN that the group would aggressively push its model laws across the U.S.

To begin with, the group’s new model legislation would ban abortion from fertilization, with the only exceptions being when a pregnant woman’s life is jeopardized.

Performing an abortion would be criminalized, of course, as would “conspiring to cause, or aiding or abetting, illegal abortions”—activity which the group would define very broadly.

Aiding and abetting an abortion would “include, but not be limited to: (1) giving instructions over the telephone, the internet, or any other medium of communication regarding self-administered abortions or means to obtain an illegal abortion; (3) hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion; (4) offering or providing illegal ‘abortion doula’ services; and (5) providing referrals to an illegal abortion provider,” explains National Right to Life.

Criminalizing such things would obviously raise some First Amendment concerns.

National Right to Life also wants new criminal laws against helping a minor obtain an abortion and against “trafficking in abortifacients.” In addition, it would be a felony to use telemedicine “to prescribe, sell, or distribute an abortifacient.”

Stopping drug-induced abortions—also referred to as medical abortion, medication abortion, or chemical abortion—is going to be a big focus of pro-life groups going forward. “Chemical abortion is the fight we’re going to be having for the next decade, probably longer,” Jennifer Popik, National Right to Life’s federal legislation director, told attendees at the group’s convention earlier this month. (Meanwhile, Attorney General Merrick Garland says Food and Drug Administration approval of such drugs may mean that states cannot ban them.)

To enforce these new abortion laws, the group wants state attorneys general—not just local district attorneys—to be given prosecutor authority. This is in case some local prosecutors refuse to enforce a state’s abortion prohibitions—as is already happening in Texas and elsewhere.

National Right to Life also urges governments to rely on not just criminal penalties but also civil penalties and licensing rules. “Traditionally, abortion laws relied on criminal enforcement to make pro-life laws effective in protecting unborn life. However, current realities require a much more robust enforcement regime than reliance on criminal penalties,” states an introduction to the model legislation.

If National Right to Life’s legislation passed, state and local governments, as well as relatives of women who receive abortions, would be able to bring civil lawsuits against any person or entity “that violates any provision of the abortion law.” Winners of such suits would be entitled to damages and to stop the provider from further action.

In addition, “wrongful death of an unborn child” suits could be brought by “the woman upon whom an illegal abortion has been performed, the father of the unborn child, and the parents of a minor.”

The model legislation also proposes Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO)–style statues, which could bring enhanced penalties for anyone found to be part of an illegal abortion enterprise.

Some activists are already getting excited about the chance to “use RICO to punish the docs,” as Florida Family Policy Council’s John Stemberger put it.

Such laws could potentially be used to target far more people than abortion doctors, however. They would be aimed at anyone who “is employed by or associated with an entity known by the person to engage is a pattern of illegal abortion activity“ (defined as two or more illegal abortions), anyone who “knowingly or intentionally receives any proceeds” from such activity, anyone who “maintains” property engaged in such activity, and more.

National Right to Life’s model legislation doesn’t mention birth control, but the fact that it considers abortion to begin at fertilization—not implantation—could be used to go after some forms of contraception. Those opposed to emergency contraception have long complained that it could prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. Under National Right to Life’s model statutes, this could be considered an abortion.

The post Here's What Abortion Laws in a Post-<i>Roe</i> World Might Look Like appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/z7dSkoi
via IFTTT

The post Supreme Court Limits EPA's Ability To Impose Costly Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cuts appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/PBG7zxu
via IFTTT