“So what was her addiction – what is equasy? It is an addiction that produces the release of adrenaline and endorphins and
which is used by many millions of people in the UK including
children and young people. The harmful consequences are well
established – about 10 people a year die of it and many more
suffer permanent neurological damage as had my patient. It has
been estimated that there is a serious adverse event every 350
exposures and these are unpredictable, though more likely in
experienced users who take more risks with equasy. It is also
associated with over 100 road traffic accidents per year – often
with deaths. Equasy leads to gatherings of users that often are
associated with these groups engaging in violent conduct.
Dependence, as defined by the need to continue to use, has
been accepted by the courts in divorce settlements. Based on
these harms, it seems likely that the ACMD would recommend
control under the MDAct perhaps as a class A drug given it
appears more harmful than ecstasy (See Table 1).
Have you worked out what equasy is yet? It stands for
Equine Addiction Syndrome, a condition characterised by gaining pleasure from horses and being prepared to countenance the
consequences especially the harms from falling off/under the
horse. I suspect most people will be surprised that riding is
such a dangerous activity. The data are quite startling – people
die and are permanently damaged from falling – with neck and
spine fracture leading to permanent spinal injury (Silver and
Parry, 1991; Silver 2002). Head injury is four times more com-
mon though often less obvious and is the usual cause of death.
In the USA, approximately 11,500 cases of traumatic head
injury a year are due to riding (Thomas, et al., 2006), and we
can presume a proportionate number in the UK. Personality
change, reduced motor function and even early onset
Parkinson’s disease are well recognised especially in rural clinical practices where horse riding is very common. In some shire counties, it has been estimated that riding causes more head
injury than road traffic accidents. Violence is historically inti-mately associated with equasy – especially those who gather
together in hunting groups; initially, this was interspecies aggression but latterly has become specific person to person violence
between the pro and anti-hunt lobby groups.”
…
“So why are harmful sporting activities allowed, whereas relatively less harmful drugs are not? I believe this reflects a societal
approach which does not adequately balance the relative risks of
drugs against their harms. It is also a failure to understand the
motivations of, particularly younger people, who take drugs and
their assessment of the perceived risks compared with other
activities. The general public, especially the younger generation,
are disillusioned with the lack of balanced political debate about
drugs. This lack of rational debate can undermine the trust in
government in relation to drug misuse and thereby undermining
the government’s message in public information campaigns.”
“Now the West Virginia plaintiffs raise several different legal arguments against the nonexistent Clean Power Plan, several of which could permanently hobble the federal government’s power to regulate if adopted by the Court.
A brief filed by several senior red-state officials, for example, rests heavily on the “major questions” doctrine, a legal doctrine that is currently fashionable among Republican judges but that was also invented entirely by judges and has no basis in any statute or provision of the Constitution.
The major questions doctrine claims that there are fairly strict limits on federal agencies’ power to hand down particularly impactful regulations. As the Court most recently stated in NFIB v. OSHA (2022), “we expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.” And several of the plaintiffs in West Virginia argue that the Clean Air Act isn’t sufficiently clear to justify a regulation like the Clean Power Plan.
One problem with this major questions doctrine is that it is vague. The Court has never explained what constitutes a matter of “vast economic and political significance,” or just how “clearly” Congress must “speak” to permit an agency to issue significant regulations. So, in practice, the major questions doctrine largely just functions as a veto power, allowing judges to justify blocking nearly any regulation they do not like. If a judge doesn’t like a particular regulation, they can just claim that it is too big.”
…
“Other briefs in the West Virginia case suggest that the Clean Power Plan violates the “nondelegation doctrine,” another judge-created doctrine that limits Congress’s power to delegate the power to issue binding regulations to federal agencies. This doctrine is even more vague than the major questions doctrine, and even more capable of being applied selectively to strike down regulations that a particular panel of judges do not like.
As Justice Neil Gorsuch described nondelegation in 2019, a federal law authorizing an agency to regulate must be “‘sufficiently definite and precise to enable Congress, the courts, and the public to ascertain whether Congress’s guidance has been followed.” How “precise” must the law be? That’s up to judges to decide.
Notably because this doctrine outright forbids Congress from delegating certain powers to an agency, a Supreme Court decision that struck down the Clean Power Plan on nondelegation grounds could permanently strip Congress of its power to authorize the EPA to issue major regulations in the future. Indeed, depending on how broadly the Supreme Court worded such a decision, it could impose drastic new limits on every single federal agency.”
…
“the issues at stake in West Virginia can be summarized fairly concisely. It is a case about a regulation that does not exist, that never took effect, and that would have imposed obligations on the energy industry that it would have met anyway. It also involves two legal doctrines that are mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, and that have no basis in any federal statute.
And yet, West Virginia could wind up permanently hobbling the government’s ability to fight climate change.”
“Their case is an unfortunate example of what some people resort to when their immigration options are limited. Often, they are willing to take on extremely risky journeys for the chance of a better life. The Patels’ story is proof that an inaccessible immigration system won’t deter migrants whose minds are made up but will instead push them toward unsafe passages.
Local media reported that the Patels, who had worked as schoolteachers in the west Indian state of Gujarat, hoped to create a “new life” in the U.S. Jagdish made just $120 per month working in a local factory, and his wife Vaishaliben dreamed of working in a beauty salon in America. NBC News noted in January that Jagdish “wanted a better education for his kids, as well as better job opportunities and higher pay for himself and his wife, none of which he felt he could find in India.” He looked to one of many advertisements in his town marketing easy passage to the U.S. Thus began the journey that would prove fatal.
For people like the Patels, immigration pathways are limited. Most Indian legal permanent residents of the U.S. have received family-based or employment-based green cards—amounting to 98 percent of visa holders as of 2018. Employment-based channels largely bring in Indian migrants with higher skills and better education than the Patels, and the family did not seem to have relatives in the U.S. who could have sponsored them. Being Indian, they were ineligible for the Diversity Visa that caters to migrants in countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S. They likely would not have been eligible for refugee or asylum pathways, given that their reasons for migrating were more rooted in economic reasons than safety concerns.
“These people effectively had no legal options that allowed them to safely travel to the U.S. and work,” says Sam Peak, an immigration policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity, a free market think tank.”
…
“Multiple factors prevented the Patels from reaching the better life they dreamed of having in the U.S. The American immigration system should welcome people who are seeking better opportunities and can improve the economies of their new communities. It may be too late for the Patels, but visa reforms can help prevent future migrant deaths on our borders.”
“since 1968 the U.S. government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has been subsidizing a significant number of its policyholders to build and live in flood-prone areas. As a result of losses outstripping its premiums, the NFIP is $20.5 billion in debt. In a recent article in Regulation, Peter Van Doren, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, points out that the often highly concentrated nature of flood disasters would require private insurers to charge premiums amounting to 5 to 9 times the average claim in order to remain solvent. Few people would buy such expensive policies.
Last fall the NFIP launched its Risk Rating 2.0 program which is raising the rates for nearly 75 percent of its policyholders. Premiums may increase by as much as 18 percent per year for owner-occupied homes and 25 percent for second homes. Over time, such increases will incentivize people to move away from areas where the sea is engulfing their homes and businesses.
A growing body of research suggests that at least some Americans are beginning to factor sea level rise into their purchases of beachfront property.”
“As the greatest inflation spike of the last 50 years occurs, the utter failure of economists, their models, and many pundits to foresee what was coming is worth highlighting. Of course, the biggest malfunction in the story was that of the Federal Reserve itself, which had a clear mandate to keep prices stable and seems surprised by their lack of stability.
It’s no understatement to say that the Fed failed to properly anticipate the inflation surge. On Feb. 8, 2021, Raphael Bostic, the president of the Atlanta branch of the Fed, said, “I’m really not expecting us to see a spike in inflation that is very robust in the next 12 months or so.” A few days later, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren echoed this sentiment, noting that he would be “surprised” to see broad-based inflation sustained at a level of two percent before the end of 2022.
As the saying goes, problems often start at the top. When testifying before the House Financial Services Committee in February 2021, Fed Chair Jerome Powell predicted that it might take more than three years to hit the two percent inflation goal.
Around the summer of 2021, inflation became hard to ignore. Yet Fed officials insisted that it wasn’t yet time to roll back their temporary policies because they weren’t responsible for the rise in prices. The main villain was identified as supply-chain restraints. Once resolved, we were told, inflation would prove to be transitory. Testifying in June of last year before a House subcommittee, Powell said:
“If you look…at the categories where these prices are really going up, you’ll see that it tends to be areas that are directly affected by the reopening. That’s something that we’ll go through over a period…then be over. And it should not leave much of a mark on the ongoing inflation process.”
During a speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, last August, Powell again echoed this sentiment. He also noted that “longer-term inflation expectations have moved much less than actual inflation or near-term expectations, suggesting that households, businesses, and market participants also believe that current high inflation readings are likely to prove transitory.”
But as Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane has been reminding us all along, long-term inflation expectations are notoriously poor predictors of inflation. Sadly, few listened, and team “transitory” was born.”
“Laboratory studies indicate that masks, especially N95 respirators, can help reduce virus transmission. But as Flam notes, “the benefits of universal masking have been difficult to quantify” in the real world, where cloth models predominate and masks may not be clean, well-fitted, or worn properly.
The strongest real-world evidence in favor of general masking comes from a randomized trial in Bangladesh, which found that the use of surgical masks reduced symptomatic infections by 11 percent. That’s not nothing, but it’s a pretty modest effect, and it was achieved with surgical masks worn by adults in conditions that encouraged proper and consistent use. The same study found that cloth masks did not have a statistically significant effect.”
…
“Given the situation during the omicron surge, there are additional reasons to doubt that mask mandates, even with perfect compliance, had much of an impact. While mandates required shoppers to don masks before entering supermarkets, for example, the risk of transmission in such settings is low, given the amount of time customers usually spend in them, the size of the air space, and typically wide distances between patrons. Conditions in bars and restaurants are more conducive to virus transmission, since customers spend more time there in closer proximity to each other, often while talking. But since people were allowed to remove their masks while eating and drinking, requiring them to cover their faces upon entry was more a symbolic gesture than a serious safeguard.
Beyond the question of how effective masking is in practice, there is the question of what impact mask mandates have on behavior. Even if masking works, that does not necessarily mean mandates do.
An Annals of Epidemiology study published last May found that mask mandates in the United States were associated with lower transmission rates from June through September 2020. “The probability of becoming a rapid riser county was 43% lower among counties that had statewide mask mandates at reopening,” the researchers reported. But the study did not take into account other policies or voluntary safeguards that may have differed between jurisdictions with and without mask mandates. Nor did it look at actual mask wearing, as opposed to legal requirements.
Based on data from various countries and U.S. states from May to September 2020, a preprint study published last June found that general mask wearing was associated with a reduction in virus transmission. But the researchers found no clear relationship between mask mandates and mask use. “We do not find evidence that mandating mask-wearing reduces transmission,” the authors reported. “Our results suggest that mask-wearing is strongly affected by factors other than mandates.”
An August 2021 systematic review of 21 observational studies found that all of them “reported SARS-CoV-2 benefits” from mask mandates “in terms of reductions in either the incidence, hospitalization, or mortality, or a combination of these outcomes.” But “few studies assessed compliance to mask wearing policies or controlled for the possible influence of other preventive measures such as hand hygiene and physical distancing.”
Like the debate about lockdowns, the debate about mask mandates will continue. Because there are so many variables to account for, it is very difficult to isolate the impact of any given policy. But it seems clear that anyone who takes it for granted that mask mandates have played a crucial role in controlling the spread of COVID-19 is making a series of assumptions that are not justified by the evidence.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinas-child-rearing-costs-far-052020959.html