Tag: FDA

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national politics & policies regulation subsidy too much government

Stay Puft America

FDA, regulations, food, rules, diet, fads

“It was perhaps just a matter of time before issues of health — not policies over health-​care provision but actual human health — would enter into our politics,” surmises Jeffrey A. Tucker in The Epoch Times. “We look at pictures of people in cities or at the beach in the 1970s and compare them with today and the results are shocking. We have changed as people and for the worse.”

Jeff Tucker is trying to explain the background for a big policy-​interest shift, as a result of the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., endorsement of Donald J. Trump. Kennedy’s big issue is health, and Trump’s gone along with it, willing to make it a part of his agenda.

In “How Did Health Become a Political Issue?” Tucker focuses first on the COVID debacle, moving on to the real culprit: government.

Or, technically, government and industry, combined into one huge Stay Puft Marshmallow of Destruction. For behind our changing eating patterns and food habits are government tariffs, subsidies, researchstrategies, diet crazes, and much, much more. 

Perhaps even bigger than Big Pharma is Big Agribiz, a conglomerate of companies pushing lab-​created additives and worse on a trusting public, or, as Tucker puts it, “many decades of heavy government subsidies for the worst food, and so much in the way of corn, soy, and wheat are produced that we’ve invented new ways to use it.”

But it’s not really “we’ve.” The Standard American Diet (SAD) wouldn’t have existed were it not for the USDA and the FDA and a whole alphabet soup of bureaus captured by the industries they were assigned to regulate, working together in a Big Biz/​Gov partnership to create a Big Problem in the general population.

Somehow, though, when asked about the government causes of SAD, RFKj said he wouldn’t abolish anything. He merely wants “better regulations.”

Someone needs a fast …from Big Government.

That someone? Kennedy. 

And America.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Distill This

hammer, hand sanitizer

This story started out lousy and then swerved into neutral. But there are still problems under the hood.

At the very end of 2020 (good riddance, 2020!), U.S. distilleries were suddenly faced with a ludicrous FDA tax of $14,000 for using their facilities to make alcohol-​based hand sanitizer.

These adaptive distilleries — about 835 of them — have long used alcohol to make booze, of course. But early last year, lockdowns began to massively reduce demand for alcoholic beverages in certain venues. It made sense to begin producing hand sanitizer in order to meet the massively new pandemic-​induced demand for sanitizer.

Win-​win, until, in the last days of 2020, FDA decided that such flexible pivoting deserved what amounts to a penalty. Bureaucrats decided that producing hand sanitizer changed how the 835 distilleries should be classified. Entities so classified — as “over-​the-​counter drug monograph facilities” — are supposed to pay the $14,000 fee.

Media coverage and the outcry by already-​walloped distilleries has, however, led the Department of Health and Human Services to rescind the penalty. HHS has told FDA to stand down. The fee has been cancelled.

So everybody is happy now, the way you’re happy when the sledgehammer swinging down doesn’t bash you in the head after all.

Aaron Bergh of Calwise Spirits wonders whether distilleries will still get hit with such a fee in 2021. What the government giveth, it can taketh. For now, though, like everyone else, he’s just darn relieved.

Happy New Year, folks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Name Your FDA Poison

FDA, hand, sanitize, virus, pandemic,

We’re dealing with a pandemic, here, and the Food and Drug Administration insists upon poisoning us.

Or, more accurately, the FDA sticks to Prohibition-​Era poisoning schemes, no matter how unreasonable or counter-productive.

Private enterprise is stepping up to the plate. “Local distilleries like Restorative Republic and rum-​maker Cotton & Reed are making artisanal hand cleaner, the primary ingredient in which is high-​proof alcohol,” writes Peter Suderman at Reason. “And anyone who buys a bottle of their booze also gets a small bottle of what you might call hipster Purell.”

This should be a feel-​good story. But government regulators are not in the feel-​good biz.

What is the FDA saying to the 500 or so distilleries across the country who want to pitch in, making up for the supply crunch?

The regulatory agency insists that they denature the alcohol in the sanitizer.

Denatured alcohol is, Wikipedia succinctly states, “ethanol that has additives to make it poisonous, bad-​tasting, foul-​smelling, or nauseating to discourage recreational consumption.”

The feds thus carry on the old prohibitionists’ tradition of poisoning products to discourage drinking. 

It’s an idiotic practice: Preventing children from destroying themselves with alcohol by making the easiest-​to-​access alcohol unpalatable. But kids have been known to sneak drinks even those they find disgusting and vile, just to get the alcohol buzz. So: let’s kill the kids! That’ll teach ’em.

And insisting that distilleries denature their alcohol means that distilleries would ruin their equipment for making drinkable alcohol.

Though some liquor distillers are trying to up hand sanitizer production, ten times more could be produced were the FDA to change its rules, Suderman explains.

Get out of the way, government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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FDA, hand, sanitize, virus, pandemic,

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Taking a (Lemonade) Stand

lemonade, freedom, regulation, FDA, free market, law, authoritarian, media

When life hands you lemons.…

Once upon a time, putting up a summertime lemonade stand was the American way for kids to learn about hard work, good will, and entrepreneurship. Almost every kid had one, making some spendable profit selling the nectar.* 

Some of the youngsters grew up to become Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and, well, lemonade’s one heck of a gateway drink.

But then, along came “progress” — that is, mandates and regulations slapped upon businesses. And the hordes of regulators required to enforce the morass of rules — “swarms of Officers.” 

Soon lemonade stands were vanquished from our neighborhoods. 

And America was made safe (at long last!) for … inane bureaucracy. 

“Reports of kids’ lemonade stands being shut down for breaking local health or permitting laws have long left grown-​ups feeling sour,” today’s Wall Street Journal informs. But the story also details how “a growing movement of adults is fighting back.”

So, when government policies hand you lemons, what do you do? 

Make a map of all the lemonade stand clampdowns. 

“I think the Constitution covers [lemonade stands] as written,” Dave Roland told the Journal, explaining the map he and his wife Jenifer have produced. “But if there’s any doubt about that, let’s get it fixed.” The Rolands run the Freedom Center in Missouri, but theirs is a regrettably national map.

Last month, the popular lemonade maker Country Time started “Legal-​Ade,”  pledging to come to the defense of any kid “busted” for trafficking in lemonade. 

Seriously.

“When life gives you arcane laws,” the company’s video says, “make lemonade.”

Taste the Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The profit was made possible largely by pushing their costs off onto their parents. But isn’t that sorta what parents are for? And good lessons were still learned.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy too much government U.S. Constitution

Hooray for Congress!

right to try, treatment, healthcare, Rights, FDA, democrats, Congress, medicine, experimental,

When Congress behaves badly, I criticize. When it works well, I applaud. 

I’ve waited a long, long, long time to put my hands together in polite applause.

It happened yesterday. 

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Senate bill, largely along party lines, to give those facing a terminal illness the “right to try.” That is, the right to try experimental drugs and treatments that haven’t yet been approved by the federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA). 

Of course, Congress doesn’t actually give us rights. We have always had the common law right — indeed, the human right — to freely seek a path to wellness when we are ill. 

From time immemorial. Even before the FDA.

So, this legislation was, more correctly put, a way to announce that the congressionally-​created FDA would stop blocking our freedom … provided we are dying and the government-​approved medical establishment has no more licensed hope to offer.

The bill now goes to President Trump. “People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure,” he declared in his last State of the Union, “I want to give them a chance right here at home.”

Democrats overwhelmingly disagreed. 

“This will provide fly-​by-​night physicians and clinics the opportunity to peddle false hope and ineffective drugs to desperate patients,” argued Rep. Frank Pallone (D‑N.J.).

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D‑Ill.) likewise charged that the legislation “puts patients at risk by allowing the sale of snake oil.”

But of course these patients are dying. That’s already as “at risk” as it gets. Our right to live includes a right to try to live.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Pardon Him, Mr. President

Samuel Girod, Kentucky, crime, Amish, FDA, drug,

Presidents tend to issue pardons as their tenures draw to a close. But many victims of our government should be pardoned right now. Until the culpable agencies can be dismantled and/​or sundry bad laws repealed, a steady flow of presidential pardons would provide the swiftest justice.

An Amish man in Kentucky, Samuel Girod, has been convicted of selling herbal remedies and such crimes as “failing to appear.” It doesn’t add up to one day in prison, let alone the six years of his sentence.

Girod created a salve from natural ingredients for treating skin disorders. After the state health department demanded that he stopped making certain claims for the product, he changed its name to Healing Chickweed. Told that the word “healing” was prohibited, he changed the name to Original Chickweed. The Food and Drug Administration also hounded him for selling various herbal remedies, which they called “drugs” because of his medical claims.

The man’s worst sin in all this seems to be failure to cooperate with the harassment. When FDA agents tried to examine his “manufacturing process,” he refused entry to his home. When Girod missed a hearing about his case, the government dubbed him a “fugitive.” The local sheriff can’t understand why the government is “victimizing such peaceful and law-​abiding citizens.”

Yes, it’s a puzzle. Many historical, political, institutional, ideological and psychological factors would help explain it. More than answers, though, Samuel Girod needs his freedom. 

How about it, Mr. President?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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