Posts Tagged ‘smoking bans’

FDA moving to ban menthol cigarettes

“The vices of the rich and great are mistaken for error; and those of the poor and lowly, for crimes.” (attributed to the Countess of Blessington) The main scientific reason (if it can be called that) cited by the Food and Drug Administration seems to be that adding menthol makes smoking more enjoyable to many users, leading to readier “initiation of the smoking habit.” [Atlantic Wire] In addition, the World Trade Organization ruled last year that it was an arbitrary trade restriction for the United States to have banned clove-flavored cigarettes of the sort formerly imported from Indonesia, as Congress did in the Tobacco Control Act of 2009, without also banning menthol-flavored cigarettes. [Jakarta Post]

More: Get ready for a huge boost to the already-thriving cigarette-smuggling business should the plan go through [ACSH] And from Arthur Caplan at Time: “Antismoking Advocates Have Misused Science.”

N.Y. trial lawyers: bowling-shoe exemption must not stand

In the New York legislature, bowling alleys are hoping to win a law protecting them from slip-fall liability arising after their customers wear store-rented shoes outside the building and either slip there or track snow or other slippery matter back inside. Weather hazards have been tripping up more customers of the ordinarily indoor sport, it seems, since the state enforced a complete indoor smoking ban. The trial lawyer association is dead set against the bill; its president claims that the bill “undercuts the constitutional right to a trial by a jury” — presumably on the theory that it somehow undercuts trial by jury for a legislature to roll back any instance of liability for anyone anywhere. That’s sheer nonsense, of course — otherwise, it’d have been unconstitutional for legislatures around most of the country to have abolished the old heartbalm torts of breach of promise to marry and alienation of affection. [Albany Times-Union via Future of Capitalism] More: Lowering the Bar.

Maryland roundup

  • Legislature won’t pass dram shop liability, lawyers ask Maryland high court to do so instead [Frederick News-Post]
  • In St. Mary’s County, new visitor rules for elementary schools ban hugging or giving homemade food to any but own kid [Southern Maryland News]
  • Progress: Maryland Senate votes to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana [NBC Washington]
  • If it’ll take $1 million for Somerset County (pop. 26,000) to cut stormwater nitrogen runoff by 145 pounds, how’s it going to manage to cut 37,000 pounds? [AP]
  • “Fracking Moratorium Falls One Vote Short of Passing Key Senate Committee” [Chestertown Spy] “Bill was more about preventing fracking than studying it.” [@ToddEberly]
  • Department of Truly Dreadful Ideas: Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Montgomery) continues to push bill to establish state-owned bank [Baltimore Business Journal]
  • Website attacking Montgomery County’s Valerie Ervin has some union fingerprints [WaPo] Sen. Brinkley blasts union bill to make all Md. teachers pay agency fees [Maryland Reporter]
  • Video interview with Hudson attorney George Ritchie on Waterkeeper v. Hudson Farm case [Center Maryland, earlier]
  • Added: “Md. Senate votes to outlaw smoking in cars with young children as passengers” [WaPo just now]

March 16 roundup

  • “A new target for tech patent trolls: cash-strapped American cities” [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica] Crowdsourcing troll control [Farhad Manjoo, Slate] “Why patent trolls don’t need valid patents” [Felix Salmon] “Why Hayek Would Have Hated Software Patents” [Timothy Lee, Cato] Et tu, Shoah Foundation? [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
  • Cory King case: “Not Everything Can Be a Federal Crime” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
  • “Ban on smoking in cars with young children clears Md. Senate” [WaPo]
  • On religious exemption to birth control mandate, NYT wrestles with unwelcome poll numbers [Mickey Kaus]
  • “Undocumented Law Grad Can’t Get Driver’s License, But Hopes for Fla. Supreme Court OK of Law License” [ABA Journal]
  • Department of Justice launches campaign against racial disparities in school discipline [Jason Riley, WSJ via Amy Alkon]
  • James Gattuso and Diane Katz, “Red Tape Rising: Obama-Era Regulation at the Three-Year Mark” [Heritage]

March 6 roundup

  • D.C. Circuit’s Janice Rogers Brown: three-decade-long case over Iran dairy expropriation raises “harshest caricature of the American litigation system” [BLT]
  • Legal blogger Mark Bennett runs for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals as Libertarian [Defending People, Scott Greenfield] And Prof. Bill Childs, often linked in this space, is departing TortsProf (and legal academia) to join a private law practice in Texas;
  • Ambitious damage claims, more modest settlements abound in Louisiana oil-rig cleanup suits [ATLA’s Judicial Hellholes, more, more, earlier]
  • Better no family at all: Lawprof Banzhaf jubilant over courts’ denial of adoption to smokers [his press release]
  • “The worst discovery request I’ve ever gotten” [Patrick at Popehat] And yours?
  • Concession to reality? Class action against theater over high cost of movie snacks seen as dud [Detroit Free Press]
  • FCPA is for pikers, K Street shows how real corruption gets done [Bill Frezza, Forbes] Dems threatening tax-bill retribution against clients whose lobbyists who back GOP candidates [Politico]