The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />
1. CULTURE
The Motion Picture Association of America announces that depictions of smoking will now be a factor in assigning movie ratings.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Policy Analyst Brooke Oberwetter reviews the politics of the film Thank You for Smoking:<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = U1 />
“Fans had plenty to fear from a movie adaptation, which opened last weekend: Would Hollywood sanitize this irreverent satire of spin culture and demonize its tobacco-shilling protagonist, Nick Naylor? Would the open mockery of health crusaders and the easily duped American public be turned into a cautionary tale about the evils of corporations? Screenwriter and director Jason Reitman remains true to Buckley's message, but the dozen years between the novel and the film have rendered the once bold satire only mildly titillating: politically incorrect enough to make the audience feel like they're in on a naughty prank against The Man, but not politically incorrect enough to tip any sacred cows.”
2. HEALTH
The Senate approves a bill to give the Food and Drug Administration expanded powers to regulate the practices of drug companies.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Fellow Dr. Henry I. Miller on the FDA’s existing bias against timely drug approvals:
“Former FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt aptly summarized the regulator’s conundrum: ‘In all our FDA history, we are unable to find a single instance where a Congressional committee investigated the failure of FDA to approve a new drug. But the times when hearings have been held to criticize our approval of a new drug have been so frequent that we have not been able to count them. The message to FDA staff could not be clearer.’ As a result, regulators make decisions defensively—in other words, to avoid approvals of harmful products at any cost—so they tend to delay or reject new products of all sorts, from fat substitutes to vaccines and painkillers. That's bad for public health and for consumers’ freedom to choose.”
3. ENVIRONMENT
University students in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Rhode Island object to being forced to watch Al Gore’s global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth in order to graduate.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on the results of the controversy:
“A Roger Williams University spokesman told me that the backlash against the required viewing of Gore’s movie prompted Dean Hughes to ‘explore alternatives’ to teaching global warming. The spokesman said that one alternative includes the presentation this fall of the counter-alarmism movie, ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle,’ a Channel 4 (U.K.) documentary that is best described as must-see global warming TV. As the chastened Dean Hughes learned, while many people have made up their minds about global warming, many others have not. Further, there is evidence that, when presented with both sides of the debate, many believers end up changing their mindset from alarmism to skepticism about the alleged climate crisis.”
Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.