“Mexico’s controversial, year-old, mandatory, front-of-package food warning label law was supposed to help Mexicans make healthier food choices and slash sky-high obesity rates in the country.
The law, which took effect one year ago this week, “requires black informational octagons to be placed on packaged foods that are high in saturated fat, trans fat, sugar, sodium[,] or calories.” Other requirements include that any food which must bear the dreaded black octagon “cannot include children’s characters, animations, cartoons, or images of celebrities, athletes[,] or pets on their packaging.”
Many food producers inside and outside Mexico opposed the labeling law, arguing it’s misleading, burdensome, and paternalistic. The Mexican government, though, claimed the law would lead Mexicans to eat 37 fewer calories per day, which would theoretically result in an average Mexican losing nearly four pounds per year. Some outside Mexico supported the labeling scheme, too. Last year, for example, a World Health Organization (WHO) regional office gushed over the black octagons and gave the Mexican government an award, calling the labels a “public health innovation” that is the “most advanced and comprehensive regulation worldwide.”
But early returns suggest the law’s impact has been negligible at best.
“More than a year after Mexico’s food warning label law took effect, sales of junk food and sugary beverages have not declined significantly, according to a market research firm and a business group,” Mexico News Daily reported last week. “In fact, sales of unhealthy products have increased in some cases, data shows.”
That’s the conclusion of a Mexico-based market research group, Kantar México, which tracks food purchases made by thousands of Mexican households each week. Mexico News Daily also notes that a Mexican government agency says purchases of treats such as candy, chocolates, and soda were higher this past September than they were in September 2020—the same month the WHO rewarded the Mexican government for its purportedly innovative efforts.
Despite the fact the law’s not working as advocates hoped and claimed it would, last week’s Mexico News Daily report notes a Mexican government official praised the labeling scheme as a success because “[c]onsumers are now more informed and empowered to make better choices.””
“Detroit’s city council introduced new rules that will allow food trucks to operate in more parts of the city beginning next spring.
“From an equity standpoint and from a food access standpoint, we believe food trucks should be able to operate in public spaces across the city,” city councilor Raquel Castañeda-Lopez, who introduced the measure, told the Detroit Free Press.”
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“While words such as “fairness and harmony” and “equitably” make for a nice word salad, they mask the true, protectionist spirit underlying the new ordinance.
“Food trucks must be 200 feet away from existing restaurants and 300 feet from entertainment and sports arena areas,” the Freep report indicates, also noting that food trucks may no longer operate after 11 p.m. That’s progress?
Maybe to Larson, whose nebulous, we kinda sorta like it remarks aren’t a huge surprise, given that Downtown Detroit Partnership’s member list includes a host of giant companies and traditional food-truck opponents—including brick-and-mortar restaurateurs and the realty groups that rent space to them.
Indeed, in discussions of expanding food truck access to other parts of Detroit—or any city or town in America—the devil’s in the details.”
“Since 2014, state and local governments have filed thousands of lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies they blame for causing the “opioid crisis” by exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the risks of prescription pain medication. The theory underlying these cases is pretty straightforward: Drug manufacturers lied, and people died.
Two recent rulings—one by a California judge, the other by the Oklahoma Supreme Court—show how misleading this widely accepted narrative is. Both decisions recognize that undertreatment of pain is a real problem and that bona fide patients rarely become addicted to prescription opioids, let alone die as a result.”
“In what might seem like a Christmas miracle come early, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering not one, but two, bills that would legalize lower density “missing middle” housing across the city.
Competing proposals introduced by Supervisors Gordon Mar and Rafael Mandelson would both allow the construction of four-unit homes (or fourplexes) on all residentially zoned land citywide. Combined with state-level reforms from earlier this year that make it easier to divide residential plots in half, both bills could theoretically allow up to eight primary residences where only one was permitted before.”
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“Unfortunately, the two proposals also include micromanaging regulations that would lead to less missing middle housing being built than a more hands-off free-market approach would produce.
Mar’s bill would permit up to four units of housing on all current Residential House zones, which currently allow between one and three homes. That sounds like a pretty sweeping reform. But there’s a catch.
Mar’s bill would require the new units to be rented out or sold at rates that are affordable to someone making 100 percent of “area median income.” The San Francisco Chronicle, which first reported on the bill, notes that the current area median income in the city is $106,550 for a couple or $133,200 for a family of four.
Affordable monthly rent for a family making that amount of money would shake out to be $2,664, according to a press release from Mar’s office—$2,000 less than pre-pandemic market-rate rents for a typical two-bedroom apartment.”
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“Consider what happened in Austin, Texas. In 2019, the city technically abolished single-family-only zoning when it created the Affordability Unlocked program, which allows developers to build larger projects with more units and fewer parking spaces in exchange for making the new homes affordable to lower-income people. Specifically, it allows the construction of up to eight units of housing in single-family-zoned areas. But to build those extra units, a developer would have to make as much as 75 percent of the new units affordable to people earning below area median income, include a certain number of two-bedroom units, and adopt a host of tenant protections.
As a result, few Affordability Unlocked projects have been built in single-family zones. Those that have required substantial subsidies from the city government.”
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“Mandelman’s fourplex legalization bill looks like laissez faire in comparison. It allows the construction of fourplexes citywide, without any of the affordability requirements in Mar’s bill.
Nevertheless, it would require newly legal fourplexes to be built at densities no larger than what the city’s current zoning allows for three-unit homes. (Mar’s proposal has the same density restrictions.) According to Hamilton, that means Mandelman’s bill is more suited for permitting triplexes than the fourplexes it technically allows.”
“On November 4, the United Kingdom’s regulatory authorities approved molnupiravir as a treatment for COVID-19 infections. Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to dawdle over approving medications that were so effective that independent Data Monitoring Committees ruled that it would be unethical to continue giving placebos to study participants.
Speaking of dawdling, the FDA has long stymied the development and roll out of another vital component for the effective use of these antiviral medications: namely, at-home COVID-19 testing. Both pills must be taken by people within 3 to 5 days of exposure or symptom onset to be most effective at preventing hospitalization and death. That means that people need to be able to test themselves quickly, easily, and cheaply.
Up until mid-October, the FDA had approved only two over-the-counter at-home COVID-19 diagnostic tests, one of which has now had to be recalled. In the last month and a half, agency regulators have finally gotten around to authorizing nine more.”
“Note, however, the bill stipulates that it only covers firms that are over the $600 billion line “as of the date of enactment.” In other words, if a company has a market cap under $600 billion on the day the bill becomes law, then that company is permanently exempt—even if it later crosses the threshold.
Two companies that are currently under the $600 billion line and thus exempt from the bill are mega-retailers Target and Walmart. These companies are both worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and their e-commerce platforms are growing at a faster rate than Amazon’s. But under the Klobuchar/Cotton law, it wouldn’t matter if Target and Walmart overtake Amazon—they would be immune from this new antitrust action, as long as they are small enough on the day the bill is signed.
Readers may be interested to note that Target is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Walmart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Isn’t that interesting? It’s probably just a coincidence that the $600-billion-at-date-of-enactment provision would shield the two most important companies in Klobuchar and Cotton’s home states.”
“Mitch McConnell didn’t know what he was doing when he passed the 2018 Farm Bill. The bill included his provision that legalized industrial hemp, a form of cannabis that can be made into a wide variety of products including cannabidiol, a non-intoxicating cannabis compound commonly called CBD. That part was intentional — the law quickly launched a multi-billion dollar industry that put the once-obscure CBD compound into lattes, seltzers and hundreds of CVS stores across the country.
But after three years it appears one of the law’s biggest impacts was entirely unintentional: It accidentally created a booming market for synthetic THC, marijuana’s primary intoxicant.
The same type of CBD that’s for sale at CVS is now being synthetically converted into THC and packaged into vape cartridges and gummy bears. Thanks to a loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill, these drugs are marketed as a “legal high” and sold online and in states where marijuana remains illegal.
But chemists warn that these drugs can contain hazardous solvents, acids and unknown compounds. When FiveThirtyEight legally purchased hemp-derived THC products for testing, we found illegal levels of THC and a variety of mystery compounds that could not be identified. There are no federal safety testing requirements for these products, and while hemp companies occasionally publish test results, some brands have been caught using fake test documents.”
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“The hemp industry has quickly moved past selling just Delta-8-THC and is now offering an increasingly long list of synthetic cannabinoids that they can ship directly to your door.”
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“McConnell has spent years fighting for hemp legalization and, in particular, the legalization of CBD in an effort to appease his home state’s farmers. He made hemp legalization a campaign issue in 2013 and, when the Drug Enforcement Agency blocked Kentucky’s farmers from growing CBD-rich hemp under an earlier pilot program, the senator publicly fought the agency until the DEA backed down.
When it came to writing the 2018 law, McConnell apparently didn’t want to take any chances with the DEA. His provision permanently removed hemp from the Controlled Substance Act”
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“The five professional chemists we spoke to for this piece were all particularly concerned by the sale of synthetic cannabinoids like Delta-8-THC-O acetate, which are both synthetically made and synthetically designed (unlike Delta-8-THC, which can be found naturally in cannabis). These types of synthetic cannabinoids were first invented by the pharmaceutical industry and can react with our internal cannabinoid receptors in unnaturally strong ways.”
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, Jordan Stevens has been running Indiana’s only full-time goat yoga operation on her farm in rural Hamilton County. She’s since been forced to stop offering that service by the planning officials who say her property isn’t zoned for goat yoga uses.
Her application for a zoning variance that would have legalized the business, Happy Goat Lucky Yoga, was also denied by the county. The expense of that process plus the added costs and hassle of not being able to run her business on her own property has Stevens, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, considering shutting down her goat yoga business entirely and applying for disability benefits.
“It sucks,” she tells Reason. “They take so much money from people who are already taxpayers and then we can’t even do the things we want to on our own property that aren’t even hurting anyone.””
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“Stevens’ farm and the smaller adjacent property owned by her grandmother, where the yoga classes were actually held, is zoned as an A-2 agricultural district.
In Hamilton County, that allows the property to be used for a number of agribusiness activities, including raising crops and livestock, retail sales of agricultural products, and home occupations. But none of those categories allowed for goat yoga or snuggling, according to Taylor, who said the business would have to obtain a zoning variance if it wanted to continue to operate legally.
His email came attached with a variance application and a suggestion she contact the state departments for Building Inspection and Transportation to get their input on legalizing her business.”
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“That all cost Stevens about $1,000, including a $500 application fee. The lost revenue from two months of not hosting classes cost her another $4,000 she says.
It was all for nought.
At a preliminary hearing, commission staff said that she would need to apply for two variances, one for her grandmother’s property where the classes are held and another for her neighboring farm where the goats are kept. That wasn’t something Stevens could easily afford, given the expense of the first application.”
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“Fortunately, neighboring Tipton County officials proved more receptive to her business. She was able to rent out their county fairgrounds, where she’ll close out the season. Having to move her whole operation out of county obviously cost a lot more, given the need to rent the fairgrounds and then cart the goats there and back. Stevens said it nevertheless cost less than having to give everyone refunds for the classes.
The expense and the whole experience has put on Stevens and her partner is a difficult financial position, as the goat yoga business is currently Stevens’ only income. She says her health condition prevents her from working other jobs outside the home and that she’s currently applying for disability benefits.”
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“Stevens tells the story of a pre-teen girl with autism who came to one of her classes with her mother. The daughter was visibly nervous at first, but quickly relaxed when one of the goats, Sofia, went right up to her.
“Sofia just went and sat on this girl’s mat the whole class and she was just petting Sofia the whole time. You could just see calm on her face and how she was so content. It’s hard to describe the peace that you see with this girl,” she says. “Those are the stories that really are why I did it. It was very therapeutic for people.”
Unfortunately, moments like that aren’t allowed in an A-2-zoned agricultural district.”
“Marijuana is nowhere as dangerous as alcohol. You can quite literally drink yourself to death; the same doesn’t apply to marijuana. So it’s almost certain that legalizing marijuana the same way won’t lead to all the same bad outcomes.
Still, there are some risks. A thorough review of the research, by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, found that marijuana poses a variety of possible downsides, which can include a higher risk of respiratory problems (if smoked), an increased risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses, an increased likelihood of car crashes, a general decrease in social achievement, and, potentially, some harm to fetuses in the womb.
There’s also the real risk of addiction and overuse. As Stanford’s Keith Humphreys put it to the Atlantic, “In large national surveys, about one in 10 people who smoke [marijuana] say they have a lot of problems. They say things like, ‘I have trouble quitting. I think a lot about quitting and I can’t do it. I smoked more than I intended to. I neglect responsibilities.’ … People will say, ‘Oh, that’s just you fuddy-duddy doctors.’ Actually, no. It’s millions of people who use the drug who say that it causes problems.”
None of that is to make the argument for prohibition, which produces its own problems”
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“An obvious question is: If the standard commercial model works for alcohol, why can’t it work for a newly legal drug like cannabis, too?
But this model doesn’t work well for alcohol. The nation’s second-most popular drug (after caffeine) is linked to nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the US — about the same as all overdose deaths, and more than the combined death tolls of car crashes and murders.
A different model could help. Previous research, for example, found that states that maintained a government-operated monopoly for alcohol kept prices higher, reduced access to youth, and cut overall levels of use”
“Before being able to break ground on a new hospital there, Piedmont Medical Center had to navigate the state’s Certificate-of-Need (CON) process, which in this case required going all the way to the state Supreme Court to fend off a legal challenge from a competitor. All that to build a 100-bed facility that the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control had determined, all the way back in 2004, was indeed needed in the region.
Unfortunately, “need” is not enough in many cases. Like how zoning laws and mandatory environmental reviews might be well-intentioned policies but are frequently wielded by “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) activists as a way to tangle new development in costly piles of red tape, the CON laws on the books in many states can be used by existing hospitals to delay or prevent new facilities from opening.
That’s exactly what happened in Fort Mill. A hospital chain based in Charlotte challenged Piedmont Medical Center’s plans for a new facility, then sued to block the state’s decision to give Piedmont permission to build the hospital. The litigation cost thousands of dollars and delayed construction by several years. Researchers at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a free market think tank, argue that even the threat of such lengthy, expensive reviews ends up deterring investments that would otherwise take place.”
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“Artificially limiting the supply of health care services can be a major issue when a pandemic or other emergency strikes, of course, but CON laws harm public health even without the help of a novel coronavirus. States with CON laws have higher mortality rates for patients with pneumonia, heart failure, and heart attacks, according to research published in 2016 by the Mercatus Center, a free market think tank that argues for repealing CON laws. Other studies show that CON laws contribute to health care shortages in rural areas because they force medical providers to focus on wealthier, more populated areas in order to make up for the added costs imposed by the CON process.”