The City of West Hollywood, in collaboration with nonprofit partner, National Council of Jewish Women/LA, will open applications for the first pilot project for guaranteed income in the nation aimed at evaluating the impact of cash payments on the financial stability and quality of life of LGBTQIA older adults. Guaranteed income is a direct and regular cash payment – no strings attached – provided to a specific group of people for a designated time. Guaranteed income pilots are a way to test the impact of these payments, while also providing a service to help financially stabilize community members and learn information to help create future, evidence-based policies and programs.
The program makes clear that, to be eligible, the applicant must (among other things) “Identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex or Asexual (LGBTQIA),” as well as be poor and 50 or older.
The California Supreme Court, as it happens, has expressly held (interpreting the state constitution’s equal protection clause) that “statutes according differential treatment on the basis of sexual orientation are subject to the strict scrutiny standard of review.” And of course equal protection principles apply to all classifications in programs in which the government engages (even if in “joint participation” with a private party) and not just to classifications written into the statute.
Here’s the program’s explanation for the sexual orientation discrimination suffice to justify it:
The City of West Hollywood is focusing on LGBTQIA older adults living on a low income because of the City’s history, current population, and data that shows that LGBT older adults are less financially secure than their non-LGBT peers due to experiencing lifelong disparities and barriers to accessing programs that support aging adults.
I’m pretty skeptical about this, but it would be interesting to see what detailed evidence and argument the city can offer to support this in court.
Getting annoyed with police who had already searched and failed to find a theft suspect on his property led an innocent 68-year-old man to be cuffed and shoved in the back of a police car in March 2021, where he had a heart attack and later died at a hospital. The officers did attempt some basic CPR when they found him without an apparent pulse slumped over in the back of their car where they’d stored him.
Two sons of William Walls are suing the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana (and two specific deputies) under 42 U.S. Code §1983, which holds government agencies and agents liable for “the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.” That wrongful death lawsuit was shifted from state to federal court this week. An officer involved, Deputy Ryan Chapman, is also facing criminal charges for his role in Walls’ death.
The officer had no warrant to enter Walls’ specific residence, nor reasonable probable cause to have cuffed him and put him in the police car where he suffered his heart attack.
As can be seen in officer bodycam footage featured in a news segment on local TV news channel KTBS, Walls at first willingly allowed the police to search his mobile home to look for a theft suspect who had indeed spent the night on the larger property the night before in one of Walls’ son’s mobile homes. But the suspect was no longer on the property when the search that led to Walls’ death happened.
Walls became annoyed the officers were still nosing around the larger property and came out of his mobile home offering them a phone, apparently so they could talk to one of his sons about the fugitive, and said they could then “get the fuck out of here.”
As seen in the video, Walls was walking back into his own mobile home, doing nothing to obstruct the officers besides having asked them to leave, when they followed him in, pushed him against a bit of furniture, and cuffed him in his own home—his invitation for them to enter obviously rescinded by then.
At the time, as seen in the video, the reasons for Walls being cuffed and dragged out of his home were expressed by Chapman as “cuss[ing]” at him and “slam[ming a] door in his face.” (As the video shows, Walls did not succeed in even shutting the door, which an officer had his hand on as he tried.) Given that they’d already searched the home, neither offense can be reasonably seen as criminal obstruction.
“I have not obstructed justice, sir,” spoken quietly, were among Walls’ last words.
While the officers insist he was a threat to their safety, that is not a conclusion a reasonable non-cop is likely to glean from the footage. Although an internal investigation (surprise) exonerated the officers, the Caddo Parish district attorney’s office sent the case to a grand jury, where Chapman was indicted.
The indictment states Chapman faces “one count of malfeasance in office stemming from a March 18, 2021, in-custody death. The charge is a felony that carries up to five years with or without hard labor and a possible fine of up to $5,000.”
In part of their lawsuit, the family stated “William E. Walls was a senior citizen who spent his entire life as a law-abiding citizen, and was trying to cooperate with law enforcement – until Deputy Chapman began acting unreasonably.”
As always, and terrifyingly, even being completely innocent can be meaningless once a police officer crosses your path. The police’s own procedures and investigatory powers seldom prevent or even punish unreasonable police behavior that causes harm and death.
Getting annoyed with police who had already searched and failed to find a theft suspect on his property led an innocent 68-year-old man to be cuffed and shoved in the back of a police car in March 2021, where he had a heart attack and later died at a hospital. The officers did attempt some basic CPR when they found him without an apparent pulse slumped over in the back of their car where they’d stored him.
Two sons of William Walls are suing the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana (and two specific deputies) under 42 U.S. Code §1983, which holds government agencies and agents liable for “the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.” That wrongful death lawsuit was shifted from state to federal court this week. An officer involved, Deputy Ryan Chapman, is also facing criminal charges for his role in Walls’ death.
The officer had no warrant to enter Walls’ specific residence, nor reasonable probable cause to have cuffed him and put him in the police car where he suffered his heart attack.
As can be seen in officer bodycam footage featured in a news segment on local TV news channel KTBS, Walls at first willingly allowed the police to search his mobile home to look for a theft suspect who had indeed spent the night on the larger property the night before in one of Walls’ son’s mobile homes. But the suspect was no longer on the property when the search that led to Walls’ death happened.
Walls became annoyed the officers were still nosing around the larger property and came out of his mobile home offering them a phone, apparently so they could talk to one of his sons about the fugitive, and said they could then “get the fuck out of here.”
As seen in the video, Walls was walking back into his own mobile home, doing nothing to obstruct the officers besides having asked them to leave, when they followed him in, pushed him against a bit of furniture, and cuffed him in his own home—his invitation for them to enter obviously rescinded by then.
At the time, as seen in the video, the reasons for Walls being cuffed and dragged out of his home were expressed by Chapman as “cuss[ing]” at him and “slam[ming a] door in his face.” (As the video shows, Walls did not succeed in even shutting the door, which an officer had his hand on as he tried.) Given that they’d already searched the home, neither offense can be reasonably seen as criminal obstruction.
“I have not obstructed justice, sir,” spoken quietly, were among Walls’ last words.
While the officers insist he was a threat to their safety, that is not a conclusion a reasonable non-cop is likely to glean from the footage. Although an internal investigation (surprise) exonerated the officers, the Caddo Parish district attorney’s office sent the case to a grand jury, where Chapman was indicted.
The indictment states Chapman faces “one count of malfeasance in office stemming from a March 18, 2021, in-custody death. The charge is a felony that carries up to five years with or without hard labor and a possible fine of up to $5,000.”
In part of their lawsuit, the family stated “William E. Walls was a senior citizen who spent his entire life as a law-abiding citizen, and was trying to cooperate with law enforcement – until Deputy Chapman began acting unreasonably.”
As always, and terrifyingly, even being completely innocent can be meaningless once a police officer crosses your path. The police’s own procedures and investigatory powers seldom prevent or even punish unreasonable police behavior that causes harm and death.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems intent on banning nearly all of the nicotine vaping products currently available in the United States, even though it acknowledges their harm-reducing potential as an alternative to combustible cigarettes. But under current law, the FDA’s e-cigarette authority is limited to nicotine derived from tobacco, which means the synthetic nicotine in products made by companies such as Puff Bar is beyond its purview. A fast-tracked spending bill that Congress is expected to pass by Friday includes a provision that would close that escape hatch by redefining “tobacco products” to include products that have nothing to do with tobacco.
“At a time when FDA is under scrutiny from multiple federal courts for unlawful regulatory overreach on nicotine, handing the agency even more powers to prevent Americans from switching to vaping is like handing car keys and a bottle opener to the town drunk,” says Amanda Wheeler, president of the American Vapor Manufacturers Association, in a press release. “This legislation is so absurd that it will extend FDA’s reach to products that have no actual, physical connection to tobacco whatsoever. This bill ought to be called the Cigarette Protection Act, because the indisputable outcome will be countless more Americans pushed away from nicotine vaping and back into combustible smoking.”
Rep. Frank Pallone (D–N.J.), who helped lead the effort to include this redefinition in the omnibus spending package, sees it differently. “This is an enormous win for public health and American consumers,” he says. “I’m grateful to members on both sides of the aisle for working with me to close this loophole.”
What Pallone calls “this loophole” is the language that Congress included in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the 2009 law that allowed the FDA to regulate tobacco products. It defines that category as “any product made
or derived from tobacco that is intended for human consumption, including any component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product.” While the law said nothing about e-cigarettes, which were barely available in the United States at the time, the FDA later interpreted that definition to include vaping products, which do not contain tobacco but typically contain nicotine derived from it.
The FDA recognizes that reading “tobacco products” to include synthetic nicotine is legally problematic. “The FDA is aware of a number of companies, such as Puff Bar, claiming their products contain only synthetic nicotine not sourced from tobacco, which may raise separate regulatory and legal issues that the agency is considering how best to address,” it says. Here is how the FDA describes those “regulatory and legal issues”:
The definition of “tobacco product” includes any product made or derived from tobacco, including any component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product. E-liquids that do not contain nicotine or other substances made or derived from tobacco may still be components or parts and, therefore, subject to FDA’s tobacco control authorities.
However, it’s possible that a disposable, closed system device that contains an e-liquid with truly zero nicotine (or synthetic nicotine) would not be regulated by the FDA as a tobacco product, if it is not intended or reasonably be expected to be used in such a fashion. FDA intends to make these determinations on a case-by-case basis, based on a totality of the circumstances.
In the FDA’s view, even nicotine-free e-liquids qualify as tobacco products because they are used in systems that can also deliver tobacco-derived nicotine. Any vaping device that can deliver tobacco-derived nicotine (even if it is not actually used for that purpose) and any parts for that device would be covered too. But even that strained logic does not encompass disposable, closed-system devices like Puff Bar’s, which the company says contain nicotine “crafted from a patented manufacturing process, not from tobacco.”
For smokers who have switched to vaping and like a wide variety of flavors (which is most of them), “this loophole” is a godsend. But as far as Pallone is concerned, it is part of a sinister plot to “hook a new generation of young people into a lifetime of nicotine addiction.” According to this way of thinking, nicotine liquids in flavors other than tobacco, no matter how popular they are among adults, are obviously aimed at minors (who are not legally allowed to buy e-cigarettes) and therefore cannot be tolerated.
The FDA seems to take a similar view. The agency has received about 6 million applications for “premarket” approval of vaping products, which it was supposed to act on by last September. It has rejected millions of applications but so far has approved just three products: R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company’s Vuse Solo and two tobacco-flavored cartridges used in that device. The FDA is still considering whether menthol-flavored Vuse cartridges should be allowed, and it has repeatedly expressed skepticism that nicotine liquids in other flavors (the ones that adult vapers overwhelmingly prefer) can be “appropriate for the protection of the public health,” as the Tobacco Control Act requires.
In the meantime, the FDA says, nearly all vaping products are “marketed unlawfully” and “subject to enforcement action at the FDA’s discretion.” Vuse Solo is one exception. Products that exclusively deliver synthetic nicotine are another—but not for long, assuming that the spending bill, the full text of which is not yet available, passes in its current form.
After the FDA ordered Puff Bar to stop selling flavored vaping products in 2020, the company started making them with synthetic nicotine. “People always say, like, ‘You guys are trying to sidestep…laws,'” Puff Bar Co-CEO Patrick Beltran told CBS News in December. “And we’re not…If there’s a law that would order us off the market tomorrow, we would pull our products off the market tomorrow.”
Beltran noted that the FDA is perversely making it harder to sell vaping products than it is to sell cigarettes, which are far more dangerous. “Traditional cigarettes on the market right now…are not safe,” he said. Why should people “trust the FDA to be stamping approvals for the safety of products,” he wondered, when the federal government “knowingly is allowing cigarettes to be on the market,” even though they “are killing 480,000 people a year”?
Anti-vaping legislators never seem to seriously consider that question. What sense is there to “public health” policies that deter smokers from switching to a much safer habit? Even when it comes to teenagers, politicians like Pallone seem to prefer that they smoke rather than vape, which makes no medical sense. Recent trends suggest that the availability of e-cigarettes has accelerated the downward trend in adolescent smoking.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D–Ill.) is reflexively outraged by the fact that Puff Bar offers a variety of flavors. “When I go to their website and I see strawberry banana and raspberry ice and banana ice flavors being sold,” he told CBS News, “I know exactly who they’re appealing to. It’s mainly kids.”
Since Krishnamoorthi falsely claims “there’s simply no evidence” that e-cigarettes help smokers quit, it is not surprising that he is similarly oblivious to research showing that adults also like the supposedly juvenile flavors that offend him. Their interests count for nothing in the mindless crusade against products that have the potential to reduce smoking-related deaths on a massive scale.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems intent on banning nearly all of the nicotine vaping products currently available in the United States, even though it acknowledges their harm-reducing potential as an alternative to combustible cigarettes. But under current law, the FDA’s e-cigarette authority is limited to nicotine derived from tobacco, which means the synthetic nicotine in products made by companies such as Puff Bar is beyond its purview. A fast-tracked spending bill that Congress is expected to pass by Friday includes a provision that would close that escape hatch by redefining “tobacco products” to include products that have nothing to do with tobacco.
“At a time when FDA is under scrutiny from multiple federal courts for unlawful regulatory overreach on nicotine, handing the agency even more powers to prevent Americans from switching to vaping is like handing car keys and a bottle opener to the town drunk,” says Amanda Wheeler, president of the American Vapor Manufacturers Association, in a press release. “This legislation is so absurd that it will extend FDA’s reach to products that have no actual, physical connection to tobacco whatsoever. This bill ought to be called the Cigarette Protection Act, because the indisputable outcome will be countless more Americans pushed away from nicotine vaping and back into combustible smoking.”
Rep. Frank Pallone (D–N.J.), who helped lead the effort to include this redefinition in the omnibus spending package, sees it differently. “This is an enormous win for public health and American consumers,” he says. “I’m grateful to members on both sides of the aisle for working with me to close this loophole.”
What Pallone calls “this loophole” is the language that Congress included in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the 2009 law that allowed the FDA to regulate tobacco products. It defines that category as “any product made
or derived from tobacco that is intended for human consumption, including any component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product.” While the law said nothing about e-cigarettes, which were barely available in the United States at the time, the FDA later interpreted that definition to include vaping products, which do not contain tobacco but typically contain nicotine derived from it.
The FDA recognizes that reading “tobacco products” to include synthetic nicotine is legally problematic. “The FDA is aware of a number of companies, such as Puff Bar, claiming their products contain only synthetic nicotine not sourced from tobacco, which may raise separate regulatory and legal issues that the agency is considering how best to address,” it says. Here is how the FDA describes those “regulatory and legal issues”:
The definition of “tobacco product” includes any product made or derived from tobacco, including any component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product. E-liquids that do not contain nicotine or other substances made or derived from tobacco may still be components or parts and, therefore, subject to FDA’s tobacco control authorities.
However, it’s possible that a disposable, closed system device that contains an e-liquid with truly zero nicotine (or synthetic nicotine) would not be regulated by the FDA as a tobacco product, if it is not intended or reasonably be expected to be used in such a fashion. FDA intends to make these determinations on a case-by-case basis, based on a totality of the circumstances.
In the FDA’s view, even nicotine-free e-liquids qualify as tobacco products because they are used in systems that can also deliver tobacco-derived nicotine. Any vaping device that can deliver tobacco-derived nicotine (even if it is not actually used for that purpose) and any parts for that device would be covered too. But even that strained logic does not encompass disposable, closed-system devices like Puff Bar’s, which the company says contain nicotine “crafted from a patented manufacturing process, not from tobacco.”
For smokers who have switched to vaping and like a wide variety of flavors (which is most of them), “this loophole” is a godsend. But as far as Pallone is concerned, it is part of a sinister plot to “hook a new generation of young people into a lifetime of nicotine addiction.” According to this way of thinking, nicotine liquids in flavors other than tobacco, no matter how popular they are among adults, are obviously aimed at minors (who are not legally allowed to buy e-cigarettes) and therefore cannot be tolerated.
The FDA seems to take a similar view. The agency has received about 6 million applications for “premarket” approval of vaping products, which it was supposed to act on by last September. It has rejected millions of applications but so far has approved just three products: R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company’s Vuse Solo and two tobacco-flavored cartridges used in that device. The FDA is still considering whether menthol-flavored Vuse cartridges should be allowed, and it has repeatedly expressed skepticism that nicotine liquids in other flavors (the ones that adult vapers overwhelmingly prefer) can be “appropriate for the protection of the public health,” as the Tobacco Control Act requires.
In the meantime, the FDA says, nearly all vaping products are “marketed unlawfully” and “subject to enforcement action at the FDA’s discretion.” Vuse Solo is one exception. Products that exclusively deliver synthetic nicotine are another—but not for long, assuming that the spending bill, the full text of which is not yet available, passes in its current form.
After the FDA ordered Puff Bar to stop selling flavored vaping products in 2020, the company started making them with synthetic nicotine. “People always say, like, ‘You guys are trying to sidestep…laws,'” Puff Bar Co-CEO Patrick Beltran told CBS News in December. “And we’re not…If there’s a law that would order us off the market tomorrow, we would pull our products off the market tomorrow.”
Beltran noted that the FDA is perversely making it harder to sell vaping products than it is to sell cigarettes, which are far more dangerous. “Traditional cigarettes on the market right now…are not safe,” he said. Why should people “trust the FDA to be stamping approvals for the safety of products,” he wondered, when the federal government “knowingly is allowing cigarettes to be on the market,” even though they “are killing 480,000 people a year”?
Anti-vaping legislators never seem to seriously consider that question. What sense is there to “public health” policies that deter smokers from switching to a much safer habit? Even when it comes to teenagers, politicians like Pallone seem to prefer that they smoke rather than vape, which makes no medical sense. Recent trends suggest that the availability of e-cigarettes has accelerated the downward trend in adolescent smoking.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D–Ill.) is reflexively outraged by the fact that Puff Bar offers a variety of flavors. “When I go to their website and I see strawberry banana and raspberry ice and banana ice flavors being sold,” he told CBS News, “I know exactly who they’re appealing to. It’s mainly kids.”
Since Krishnamoorthi falsely claims “there’s simply no evidence” that e-cigarettes help smokers quit, it is not surprising that he is similarly oblivious to research showing that adults also like the supposedly juvenile flavors that offend him. Their interests count for nothing in the mindless crusade against products that have the potential to reduce smoking-related deaths on a massive scale.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems intent on banning nearly all of the nicotine vaping products currently available in the United States, even though it acknowledges their harm-reducing potential as an alternative to combustible cigarettes. But under current law, the FDA’s e-cigarette authority is limited to nicotine derived from tobacco, which means the synthetic nicotine in products made by companies such as Puff Bar is beyond its purview. A fast-tracked spending bill that Congress is expected to pass by Friday includes a provision that would close that escape hatch by redefining “tobacco products” to include products that have nothing to do with tobacco.
“At a time when FDA is under scrutiny from multiple federal courts for unlawful regulatory overreach on nicotine, handing the agency even more powers to prevent Americans from switching to vaping is like handing car keys and a bottle opener to the town drunk,” says Amanda Wheeler, president of the American Vapor Manufacturers Association, in a press release. “This legislation is so absurd that it will extend FDA’s reach to products that have no actual, physical connection to tobacco whatsoever. This bill ought to be called the Cigarette Protection Act, because the indisputable outcome will be countless more Americans pushed away from nicotine vaping and back into combustible smoking.”
Rep. Frank Pallone (D–N.J.), who helped lead the effort to include this redefinition in the omnibus spending package, sees it differently. “This is an enormous win for public health and American consumers,” he says. “I’m grateful to members on both sides of the aisle for working with me to close this loophole.”
What Pallone calls “this loophole” is the language that Congress included in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the 2009 law that allowed the FDA to regulate tobacco products. It defines that category as “any product made
or derived from tobacco that is intended for human consumption, including any component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product.” While the law said nothing about e-cigarettes, which were barely available in the United States at the time, the FDA later interpreted that definition to include vaping products, which do not contain tobacco but typically contain nicotine derived from it.
The FDA recognizes that reading “tobacco products” to include synthetic nicotine is legally problematic. “The FDA is aware of a number of companies, such as Puff Bar, claiming their products contain only synthetic nicotine not sourced from tobacco, which may raise separate regulatory and legal issues that the agency is considering how best to address,” it says. Here is how the FDA describes those “regulatory and legal issues”:
The definition of “tobacco product” includes any product made or derived from tobacco, including any component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product. E-liquids that do not contain nicotine or other substances made or derived from tobacco may still be components or parts and, therefore, subject to FDA’s tobacco control authorities.
However, it’s possible that a disposable, closed system device that contains an e-liquid with truly zero nicotine (or synthetic nicotine) would not be regulated by the FDA as a tobacco product, if it is not intended or reasonably be expected to be used in such a fashion. FDA intends to make these determinations on a case-by-case basis, based on a totality of the circumstances.
In the FDA’s view, even nicotine-free e-liquids qualify as tobacco products because they are used in systems that can also deliver tobacco-derived nicotine. Any vaping device that can deliver tobacco-derived nicotine (even if it is not actually used for that purpose) and any parts for that device would be covered too. But even that strained logic does not encompass disposable, closed-system devices like Puff Bar’s, which the company says contain nicotine “crafted from a patented manufacturing process, not from tobacco.”
For smokers who have switched to vaping and like a wide variety of flavors (which is most of them), “this loophole” is a godsend. But as far as Pallone is concerned, it is part of a sinister plot to “hook a new generation of young people into a lifetime of nicotine addiction.” According to this way of thinking, nicotine liquids in flavors other than tobacco, no matter how popular they are among adults, are obviously aimed at minors (who are not legally allowed to buy e-cigarettes) and therefore cannot be tolerated.
The FDA seems to take a similar view. The agency has received about 6 million applications for “premarket” approval of vaping products, which it was supposed to act on by last September. It has rejected millions of applications but so far has approved just three products: R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company’s Vuse Solo and two tobacco-flavored cartridges used in that device. The FDA is still considering whether menthol-flavored Vuse cartridges should be allowed, and it has repeatedly expressed skepticism that nicotine liquids in other flavors (the ones that adult vapers overwhelmingly prefer) can be “appropriate for the protection of the public health,” as the Tobacco Control Act requires.
In the meantime, the FDA says, nearly all vaping products are “marketed unlawfully” and “subject to enforcement action at the FDA’s discretion.” Vuse Solo is one exception. Products that exclusively deliver synthetic nicotine are another—but not for long, assuming that the spending bill, the full text of which is not yet available, passes in its current form.
After the FDA ordered Puff Bar to stop selling flavored vaping products in 2020, the company started making them with synthetic nicotine. “People always say, like, ‘You guys are trying to sidestep…laws,'” Puff Bar Co-CEO Patrick Beltran told CBS News in December. “And we’re not…If there’s a law that would order us off the market tomorrow, we would pull our products off the market tomorrow.”
Beltran noted that the FDA is perversely making it harder to sell vaping products than it is to sell cigarettes, which are far more dangerous. “Traditional cigarettes on the market right now…are not safe,” he said. Why should people “trust the FDA to be stamping approvals for the safety of products,” he wondered, when the federal government “knowingly is allowing cigarettes to be on the market,” even though they “are killing 480,000 people a year”?
Anti-vaping legislators never seem to seriously consider that question. What sense is there to “public health” policies that deter smokers from switching to a much safer habit? Even when it comes to teenagers, politicians like Pallone seem to prefer that they smoke rather than vape, which makes no medical sense. Recent trends suggest that the availability of e-cigarettes has accelerated the downward trend in adolescent smoking.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D–Ill.) is reflexively outraged by the fact that Puff Bar offers a variety of flavors. “When I go to their website and I see strawberry banana and raspberry ice and banana ice flavors being sold,” he told CBS News, “I know exactly who they’re appealing to. It’s mainly kids.”
Since Krishnamoorthi falsely claims “there’s simply no evidence” that e-cigarettes help smokers quit, it is not surprising that he is similarly oblivious to research showing that adults also like the supposedly juvenile flavors that offend him. Their interests count for nothing in the mindless crusade against products that have the potential to reduce smoking-related deaths on a massive scale.
Companies sold about $30.6 billion worth of legal marijuana last year, making cannabis one of the fastest growing industries in the United States. Marijuana arrests, as a consequence, are way down. None of that provides comfort, though, to a 40-year-old Pittsburgh man named Daniel Muessig, who faces five years in prison for selling weed. A former lawyer with no criminal history, Muessig pleaded guilty last year to federal charges of conspiring to distribute 100 kilograms or more of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute 100 kilograms or more of marijuana.
U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab sentenced Muessig on Tuesday, March 8, citing “the seriousness of the offense” and the need to “promote respect for the law.”
Muessig was swept up in a far-reaching federal investigation into trafficking of cocaine and heroin when agents discovered more than 400 pounds of marijuana during a raid on “stash house” in Squirrel Hill on May 24, 2019. (Muessig admits to dealing marijuana but says he has never sold or taken harder drugs.) He escaped from the raid on foot and lived in limbo for more than two years. Gradually, his fear of going to prison gave way to hope; he and his wife, Laura Boyarsky, began the process of adopting a child.
But everything changed when he was indicted last August and pleaded guilty in November. Federal law requires a minimum sentence of five years for his crimes. The mandatory minimum “removes any consideration of past history,” says Morgan Fox, political director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, known as NORML, which supports the legalization of weed.
Muessig’s case is unusual, but hardly unique. In FY 2020, federal courts sentenced 1,118 people for marijuana trafficking, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Some 62 percent were Hispanic and 18 percent were black.) “Federal prosecutors, generally, have not been prioritizing cannabis issues,” Fox says. “But they have the ability to do so.”
Last month, for example, Fayao “Paul” Rong, 51, was arrested and charged with trafficking large quantities of marijuana illegally grown in Oregon; if convicted, he faces a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence (due to the large quantities of marijuana involved). The vast majority of marijuana arrests (about 350,000 in 2020) were made at the state level, but most states allow judges discretion in sentencing.
To avoid the five-year minimum, Muessig could have provided evidence against others involved in the drug trafficking ring. He declined. “I’m not a snitch,” he says. “It’s against my moral code. No one is going to jail for marijuana on my watch if I can help it.”
Muessig was raised in a middle-class home in Squirrel Hill, a tight-knit Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh. He first worked as a rapper, touring Europe and selling CDs and records. He then became a criminal defense lawyer, enjoying a few minutes of fame when he released a brash YouTube video featuring testimonials from men, who appeared to be his criminal pals, thanking him for getting them off the hook. “I may have a law degree, but I think like a criminal,” Muessig says in the video. Slate called it “the best (or worst) lawyer commercial ever made.”
When Muessig realized that the video might prejudice prosecutors and judges against him, he gave up on law and turned to what he knew: pot. Pennsylvania has not legalized marijuana for recreational use, but “people needed cannabis here,” Muessig says. “I did it for money, yes. I also did it because people in our community deserved access before the government and monied interests decided it was suitable for them to get it.”
President Joe Biden said last year that “no one should go to jail for the use of a drug,” but he’s done little to curb the war on drugs. Biden and Congress could end all federal marijuana prosecutions by removing the drug from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, which is supposed to be reserved for dangerous drugs with no accepted medical use. Biden could additionally ask the Justice Department to halt marijuana prosecutions. He’s also been urged by reformers to pardon federal prisoners who are now incarcerated for drug offenses. About two-thirds of Americans say they support marijuana legalization, according to Gallup.
Andrew DeAngelo, board chair of an advocacy group called The Last Prisoner Project and a supporter of Muessig, says, “Nobody should be locked up for weed. It’s clearly wrong.” DeAngelo and his brother Steve both served time for marijuana possession before they started the largest medical marijuana dispensary in Harborside, California. They’ve seen the business from every angle. Biden can’t shake “the prohibitionist mindset,” says Andrew. “We’ve just got to keep raising hell.”
Muessig, for his part, is resigned to his fate. “I’ll take my punishment like a man,” he told the judge. His imprisonment will do little more than create a market opportunity for the next marijuana distributor in Pittsburgh.
Companies sold about $30.6 billion worth of legal marijuana last year, making cannabis one of the fastest growing industries in the United States. Marijuana arrests, as a consequence, are way down. None of that provides comfort, though, to a 40-year-old Pittsburgh man named Daniel Muessig, who faces five years in prison for selling weed. A former lawyer with no criminal history, Muessig pleaded guilty last year to federal charges of conspiring to distribute 100 kilograms or more of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute 100 kilograms or more of marijuana.
U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab sentenced Muessig on Tuesday, March 8, citing “the seriousness of the offense” and the need to “promote respect for the law.”
Muessig was swept up in a far-reaching federal investigation into trafficking of cocaine and heroin when agents discovered more than 400 pounds of marijuana during a raid on “stash house” in Squirrel Hill on May 24, 2019. (Muessig admits to dealing marijuana but says he has never sold or taken harder drugs.) He escaped from the raid on foot and lived in limbo for more than two years. Gradually, his fear of going to prison gave way to hope; he and his wife, Laura Boyarsky, began the process of adopting a child.
But everything changed when he was indicted last August and pleaded guilty in November. Federal law requires a minimum sentence of five years for his crimes. The mandatory minimum “removes any consideration of past history,” says Morgan Fox, political director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, known as NORML, which supports the legalization of weed.
Muessig’s case is unusual, but hardly unique. In FY 2020, federal courts sentenced 1,118 people for marijuana trafficking, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Some 62 percent were Hispanic and 18 percent were black.) “Federal prosecutors, generally, have not been prioritizing cannabis issues,” Fox says. “But they have the ability to do so.”
Last month, for example, Fayao “Paul” Rong, 51, was arrested and charged with trafficking large quantities of marijuana illegally grown in Oregon; if convicted, he faces a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence (due to the large quantities of marijuana involved). The vast majority of marijuana arrests (about 350,000 in 2020) were made at the state level, but most states allow judges discretion in sentencing.
To avoid the five-year minimum, Muessig could have provided evidence against others involved in the drug trafficking ring. He declined. “I’m not a snitch,” he says. “It’s against my moral code. No one is going to jail for marijuana on my watch if I can help it.”
Muessig was raised in a middle-class home in Squirrel Hill, a tight-knit Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh. He first worked as a rapper, touring Europe and selling CDs and records. He then became a criminal defense lawyer, enjoying a few minutes of fame when he released a brash YouTube video featuring testimonials from men, who appeared to be his criminal pals, thanking him for getting them off the hook. “I may have a law degree, but I think like a criminal,” Muessig says in the video. Slate called it “the best (or worst) lawyer commercial ever made.”
When Muessig realized that the video might prejudice prosecutors and judges against him, he gave up on law and turned to what he knew: pot. Pennsylvania has not legalized marijuana for recreational use, but “people needed cannabis here,” Muessig says. “I did it for money, yes. I also did it because people in our community deserved access before the government and monied interests decided it was suitable for them to get it.”
President Joe Biden said last year that “no one should go to jail for the use of a drug,” but he’s done little to curb the war on drugs. Biden and Congress could end all federal marijuana prosecutions by removing the drug from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, which is supposed to be reserved for dangerous drugs with no accepted medical use. Biden could additionally ask the Justice Department to halt marijuana prosecutions. He’s also been urged by reformers to pardon federal prisoners who are now incarcerated for drug offenses. About two-thirds of Americans say they support marijuana legalization, according to Gallup.
Andrew DeAngelo, board chair of an advocacy group called The Last Prisoner Project and a supporter of Muessig, says, “Nobody should be locked up for weed. It’s clearly wrong.” DeAngelo and his brother Steve both served time for marijuana possession before they started the largest medical marijuana dispensary in Harborside, California. They’ve seen the business from every angle. Biden can’t shake “the prohibitionist mindset,” says Andrew. “We’ve just got to keep raising hell.”
Muessig, for his part, is resigned to his fate. “I’ll take my punishment like a man,” he told the judge. His imprisonment will do little more than create a market opportunity for the next marijuana distributor in Pittsburgh.
The Hutnyk family has lived in Lviv, Ukraine, for several generations. Volodymyr Hutnyk is the mayor of what his daughter, Oksana, refers to as “the five villages.” Working as a travel agent, Oksana lives with her husband and two young daughters. Her brother, Roman, owns an IT company and lives right next door.
The Hutnyks spoke with Reason‘s Nancy Rommelmann, who is on the ground in Lviv, about how Ukrainians don’t want to abandon their home; they want to stay and fight. The family urges the U.S. to send more support to Ukraine so that “Putin’s influence does not spread across Europe.”
What follows are transcripts from a series of interviews with the Hutnyk family, edited for length, clarity, and style.
Oksana Hutnyk, pictured with her daughter Viktoria, greeted Rommelmann with hot soup, coffee, and cake.
“My husband tells me every night to take the children and cross the border; to go to Poland. I don’t want to go. I think everyone should defend their land. This is my motherland, my village, my city. If I were somewhere abroad and somebody bombed my house, my village, my Ukraine, I would go crazy. It is easier psychologically to be here watching somebody bomb this place than to not be.”
“We are preparing. [The children] are worrying. Our older daughter was going to school every day and helping make military nets, to protect our soldiers. So she feels important. Our younger daughter is worrying but she does not want to go without me. I offered to take them to relatives and leave them for a period of time and come back, but she doesn’t want to stay there without me. My husband thinks that I am too… I don’t know how to say this: not good mother; that I am not worrying about my children. I realize that maybe one moment they will bomb our city maybe, I will have to move away, but not now.
“[My friends] have had different reactions. Some are already in Czech Republic, in Poland. Some of them went to defend Kyiv. I don’t judge. People are not under attack [here] but they try to help. Some people are helping prepare food for refugees coming from the east and from the center. Many of my friends, even though I don’t know if it’s legal, I suppose it is, they look for weapons and for protection from abroad, from Poland and other countries, and they bring weapons to the border and take it across or pay money and send them to Kyiv.
“I didn’t support [Zelenskyy]. He was a good comedian but I couldn’t take him seriously; it was like a joke, come on. But now I admire him. He’s the best president of Ukraine ever. Our whole nation is proud of our president. He is a real patriot; he is very strong. It’s like a Ukrainian joke now: ‘Americans wanted to rescue Zelenskyy from Kyiv, but the plane couldn’t take off because of Zelenskyy’s heavy iron balls.’
“Russians really don’t know what they are doing here. No one knows what Putin is doing here. That is one point. The next is, Russians were stealing money for a long period, telling people they were investing in the military, and they weren’t. They have very old weapons. And Ukrainians now, thanks to the U.S. and Europe, have good weapons. There are many more Russian troops in Ukraine, but I suppose Ukrainians are stronger because of the weapons and the motivation.
“The situation is changing in Russia. They are not worrying about Ukraine, of course, they are worrying about themselves, their money, the rate of the ruble fell and they don’t have cash. Russia is not the U.S., there are many cities and villages where you can’t just use your credit card or your telephone to pay. They have long lines at the banks and they’re promised, ‘Wait two days, we will bring cash for you.’ And in two days they say, ‘Well, it’s been postponed’ and so on. [Russians] hope this is for maybe two weeks, for one month; they will finish the conflict and everything will be okay. But it’s not going to be okay anymore.
“I’m not expecting that people will get rid of Putin. But I hope, and it’s my opinion, that people are very angry. His generals say he is shouting at everyone now. That’s uncharacteristic. He never shouts, he never expresses his aggression, and now he is. Not now, but maybe in two weeks, we will have very angry people on one hand, and a very angry Putin on another hand. And what is between them? Putin is talking all the time now about his red button, to make everyone afraid of him. I think he is angry with Ukrainians, but he is happy to realize the West is afraid of him. I think he treats the situation like he is the highest, like the king of the world because the U.S. and Europe can’t do anything to him, and that’s a problem. It makes him hope that he will destroy everything in Ukraine and he won’t be punished.
Volodymyr Hutnyk greets people in his offices at the Council of Zymna Voda. Oksana translated for her father.
“Since February 24th, everything has changed and now [the council] is taking care of refugees. We’ve had 455 refugees here already. We find food for them, a place to stay, and help them to cross the border and go someplace abroad.
“[Putin] is a psychologically ill person and he’s very dangerous and he threatens not only Ukraine but the whole world. He really wants to be the most powerful leader in the world, and he doesn’t want just some part of Europe, he wants to influence even America. He wants to prove that he is the strongest in the world, and that America should be afraid of him.
“Throughout their history, Russians were invaders. They were coming from the East and living at the cost of others. And they don’t know what democracy is. This is like the empire of evil and should be destroyed. Russian people shouldn’t be killed, but their system should be destroyed. If Ukraine with help from the civilized world can’t stop this evil now, it could spread all over the world. At this moment, we don’t need troops from NATO, but we need air support. Give us weapons and make us strong enough to fight against them. We have supplies from abroad at the moment, but we need more.
“Putin has brought so much pain here and nothing good, the Ukrainian population here hates Russians. They know they will destroy everything. People want to live democratic lives, they want to develop themselves, to earn money, have normal jobs, raise normal families. Even Russian-speaking Ukrainians don’t want Russians here.
“Putin is not afraid of the West at all; he thinks you are very powerless and indecisive. That is why he allowed himself and his troops to come into our country. If he was afraid of the U.S., he would have never done this. He can predict that the West will not influence the situation dramatically.
“We thank the U.S. We are happy to have your support on our side. And we thank you for sanctions also, and for weapons. We don’t need somebody to fight for Ukraine, we will do it by ourselves. We are ready to fight, but help us with weapons, we need them today, we need to protect our country.”
Roman Hutnyk, Oksana’s brother, runs his IT company in a lavish home nearby to where Oskana’s family lives. Roman is also a reserve officer.
“There are thousands of people that they might call and it could potentially be me. But there are so many volunteers, just guys who want to get there. I’m a software developer. I’m the guy who has been pushing the buttons for the last thirteen years. And I have no idea how to shoot, I’m just not reliable. I mean, what’s the value of me being there? It’s better for me to stay here, to volunteer to help in other ways. To keep the economy moving, to keep business running. Our government said to us, ‘Just keep working. Do whatever you do on a daily basis. We need the economy to keep moving’.
“[Americans] definitely need to understand that you cannot trust Russians. I mean, you see that they just bombed houses, attacking civilians. There’s no honor. Every military has a code—things you can do and you can’t do. In true war, military guys are fighting against another military. It’s not that way. They will attack civilians and they will say, ‘See? Ukrainian attacking civilians.’ No. They came with arms to kill us. We just protect our lands and our families. We are not going to Moscow or anywhere trying to attack them.
“The propaganda just destroyed the brains of the Russian population. They think they are cool even though their restrooms are outside of the house for more than 70 percent of the population. But they think they’re a great nation. Come on. Your army, 200,000 troops of such a huge country, cannot do anything, compared to tiny Ukraine. I realized we lost a lot of guys. But I believe the numbers are quite higher on the Russian side. When they see Ukrainians, they just run away. So now we are probably the angriest people in the world for them, which I love. Part of our success is motivation. Russian soldiers have no idea what they are fighting for here. Our guys, they clearly understand what they are fighting for. I’m not really a fighter. But at this point, there is no room for fear. If they come here, you have to stand and you have to protect.
“Some guys of my age left and went to Poland. And now no one respects them. You left us at this moment of time, really? It’s completely fine to send your wife and your kids wherever you want. That’s fine. But this is our land. I was thinking about this because I have clients in the U.S., Austria, and the U.K. And most of them were telling me, ‘My house is open to you, you can come at any moment.’ But so far, we are not willing to use this option. Yeah, I can pack my two kids and wife and go to the U.S.. That’s probably what I would prefer. But I have my sisters here, my parents, then my in-laws and grandma and so on. How could I leave them here?
“What Putin is doing right now is definitely terrible. But long term, he helped our nation to recover, to unite. And I believe after this war, we will become a completely different society. We will become a true European nation with European values and hopefully we will join the E.U. Right now, our president has support from 90 percent of the population. The entire world likes him, and I believe that is just because he’s not a politician, he’s not a diplomat.
“It’s terrible having war in your country. On another hand it will be the end of our [struggle] with Putin. I think that for the next couple of generations, they will be like, Russian? I don’t want to even know anything about you. Just stay away.’ And that’s good. That’s what we need. That gives us a chance to build a nice society. And be successful and live like Poland or Germany or whoever. And I believe we are proving that we deserve that.
Idaho lawmakers are threatening librarians and some other educational employees with fines and even jail for exposing minors to material the government deems harmful.
Idaho, like most states, has a law that makes it a crime to expose or provide to youths under the age of 18 material that includes nudity, sexual conduct, or sadomasochism either in imagery or description. The penalty for violating the law is a fine of up to $1,000 and up to one year in jail.
There are a number of affirmative defenses that people are permitted to use if they’re charged with violating the law: if the defendant reasonably believed the minor was actually of legal age (they had a false I.D., for example); if the minor is accompanied by a consenting parent or guardian; and for the moment, if the defendant is an employee of a library, school, university, museum or similar educational organization serving in his or her capacity as an employee.
A bill that passed Idaho’s House (51-14) Monday would eliminate the library and educational institution exception. H.B. 666 (no, really), would simply strike out the part of the law that provides a defense for school and museum employees and librarians and replaces it with nothing at all. This has left librarians worried that they could be subjected to criminal penalties for any works that present nudity or sexual contact regardless of the context.
Existing Idaho law establishes that this restriction doesn’t apply to a work that “possesses serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors, according to prevailing standards in the adult community, with respect to what is suitable for minors.”
And so, in this new culture war reboot of 1980s-era LGBT panic, a law that determines what is and isn’t harmful based on the “prevailing standards in the adult community” is a political minefield that defies a consistent or even coherent definition. The Idaho Capital Sun reported from a hearing on the bill last week where parents brought books they’ve encountered with LGBT content and declared that it should count as obscene or pornographic regardless of whether it even contained any sort of nudity or sexual content:
Books mentioned included “An ABC of Equality,” “Lawn Boy,” “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” and “Gender Queer: A Memoir.”
“How did we go from ‘Pollyanna’ to drag queen for the kids? My daughter’s innocence was violated,” parent Kara Claridge told legislators. “But what happens when kids start acting on these graphic behaviors put forth in these books?”
Yes, we are back to this bizarre belief that homosexuality or bisexuality is not caused by a complex set of genetic and biological factors but by kids being exposed to works that treat gay people the same as straight people. Just reading about gay people violates a child’s innocence and will simply cause children to decide to turn gay.
This, of course, is not true, and it’s particularly strange for all of this to return to the culture wars given that gay marriage and relationships are now fully legal across all 50 states and are treated the same as heterosexual marriages under the law. Most Americans—and even a majority of Republicans—support the legal recognition of same-sex relationships.
Opponents of H.B. 666 say it’s unconstitutionally vague. The Associated Press reported Monday that Democratic House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel (D–Boise) was not actually able to get an answer from bill sponsor Rep. Gayann DeMordaunt (R–Eagle) on whether a librarian could be prosecuted for stocking a Judy Blume book that references masturbation.
The vagueness is clearly partly the point. If lawmakers actually had to list specific works they found obscene then they’d have to deal with the specific defenses of those works (things like the legality of same-sex relationships and medical and psychological endorsement of trans treatments). By simply creating a risk of prosecution, libraries will remove works out of fear of getting arrested and having to defend the right to provide access to these works. It’s not unlike the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida that threatens schools with potentially costly civil prosecutions for violating vaguely defined prohibitions against discussion sexual orientation and gender identity. The vagueness is intended to make schools think twice about allowing discussion of the topic at all in order to make sure they don’t get into legal hot water. The Florida bill just passed today and has been sent to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for his signature.
In these “for the sake of the children” culture war fights, inevitably the adults reveal that it’s never about what is or isn’t obscene or even culturally accepted (because, again, we like the gays now). It’s about what they personally approve of. A quote from Monday’s House vote summed it up nicely:
“I would rather my 6-year-old grandson start smoking cigarettes tomorrow than get a view of this stuff one time at the public library,” said Republican Rep. Bruce Skaug (Nampa).
