On July 25, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy held a hearing called “Examining JUUL’s Role in the Youth Nicotine Epidemic: Part II.” The subcommittee used some 55,000 documents in its investigation. Members said that a division of the JUUL company, which manufactures e-cigarettes, paid schools to be allowed to present information. The company maintains that the programs were to teach students about the perils of nicotine addiction, and that they no longer sponsored such programs. Matthew Myers, who is the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, testified that JUUL was behaving…

In the fight to combat the opiate epidemic in America, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced a new initiative. Priorities include changing physicians’ opioid prescribing practices, expanding the use of naloxone, which treats overdoses, and expanding medication-assisted treatment to address addiction and mortality related to opioid drugs. An HHS fact sheet released April 24, 2019, says that: “from January 2017 to February 2019, there has been a 23 percent increase in patients receiving buprenorphine and a 42 percent increase in prescriptions for naltrexone. Community health centers funded by HRSA [Health Resources and Services Administration] saw a…

On March 10, 2019, an Ethiopian Air plane crashed in Ethiopia, killing all 157 people on board, including eight American citizens. The aircraft was a Boeing 737 MAX. Evidence suggested that a new automated system could have contributed to the crash. Later in the month, the Aviation and Space Subcommittee of the U. S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the state of airline safety. A focus of the hearing was the way in which aviation safety remains a paramount concern even as technology has advanced and changed. Daniel K. Elwell, Act­ing Administrator of the…

A year after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Senator Bob Menendez (NJ-D) and Representative Ted Deutch (FL-D) introduced the Keep America Safe Act. The bill would ban the sale of gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. In a February 12 press conference, supporters called the legislation a step in the process of passing individual gun safety measures instead of a comprehensive package. Senator Richard Blumenthal (CT-D), cosponsor of the bill, stated: “Guns become doubly and triply deadline in these massacres because of these high-capacity magazines, and so if we…

The House of Representatives will soon take up legislation to require universal background checks for gun buyers. The Bipartisan Background Checks Act — H.R. 8, introduced by Representative Mike Thompson (CA-D) — has 230 cosponsors, including five Republicans. The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the bill on February 6, titled “Preventing Gun Violence: A Call to Action.” The bill would close the “gun show loophole,” which allows people purchasing firearms through private sales, typically at gun shows, to forgo a background check. Under the legislation, only licensed firearms dealers would be permitted to exchange weapons, with a few…

One item in the recently enacted Farm Bill is the legalization of hemp farming. The law incorporates Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (KY-R) Hemp Farming Act of 2018, which took hemp off of the Controlled Substances Act. It’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s job to put the farm bill into action. (In general, the law deals with programs that include rural development, conservation, and nutrition as well as farming.) Also, it enables hemp producers to obtain Federal crop insurance. (McConnell signed the Farm Bill Conference Report with a pen made from hemp.) In a December 2018 speech, McConnell stated: “Last…

The Trump Administration has proposed a new rule that would ban bump stocks, devices that are used to make semiautomatic guns operate like machine guns. The shooter in the Las Vegas shooting used a bump stock. Bump stocks are banned in some States, including Delaware, Hawaii, and Florida. In December of 2018, the Department of Justice wrote that it was “… amending the regulations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to clarify that bump-stock-type devices—meaning “bump fire” stocks, slide-fire devices, and devices with certain similar characteristics—are “machineguns” as defined by the National Firearms Act of 1934…

A position paper published by the American College of Physicians (ACP) on November 20, 2018, argued that firearm-related deaths and injuries in the United States need to be addressed. The paper stated: “The ACP is concerned about not only the alarm­ing number of mass shootings in the United States but also the daily toll of firearm violence in neigh­borhoods, homes, workplaces, and public and private places across the country.” The National Rifle Association responded with a tweet that said: “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are…

On October 30, President Trump announced that he is considering issuing an Executive Order to end birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship is the principle that anyone born on American soil is automatically a citizen, regardless of the immigration status of the parents, as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.” The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868 as part of the Reconstruction Amendments after the Civil War, and was intended to…

In early October, in a rare act of bipartisanship, Congress approved a legislative package to address the opioid epidemic, sending it to the President for his signature. The conference report on the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act passed the Senate on October 3 by a vote of 98 to 1, and the House on October 5 by a vote of 393 to 8. The legislation: Reauthorizes funding for the 21st Century Cures Act, passed by the previous Congress, which provided $500 million annually to combat the opioid crisis, and gives…