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Harm-Reducing Tobacco Alternatives Are a Human Achievement
Regardless of where the innovation comes from, we ought to embrace any safer alternative to smoking.
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New Bill Could Save Vaping Market and Millions of Lives
If we can’t fully overturn FDA’s authority to regulate vapes, the next best option would be to alter the grandfather date as the Deeming Authority…
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CEI Salt Study Leaves a Bad Taste in Anti-Salt Advocates’ Mouths
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Time to Shake up Salt-Only Approach to Hypertension
What you’ve heard about salt and hypertension may not be right. If we truly hope to conquer this disease, we must pay attention to all…
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Overturning FDA’s Vape Ban Could Save Millions of Lives
If confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price could help save millions of American lives by stopping the Food and Drug Administration’s…
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Tom Price Should Focus on Reversing ‘Mission Creep’ at HHS
If confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price should reverse decades of mission creep and refocus federal health agencies on their…
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Crash Course in Gambling Law for Would-be Attorney General Sessions
Federal law does not ban all online gambling, despite what U.S. Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions has suggested.
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FDA’s Sodium Plan Would Continue Four Decades of Failed Policy
Hypertension, which is chronically elevated blood pressure, effects about 70 million Americans, putting them at an increased risk for developing heart disease or having a…
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Supreme Court Can Save America by Taking a Gamble on Sports Betting
America is a betting nation, and last Tuesday we elected something of a wild card to be our next Commander in Chief.
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FDA Taking Public Comment on Ill-Advised Sodium Reduction Plan
The Food and Drug Administration wants to help Americans lower sodium intake to reduce rates of hypertension and associated problems like heart disease, stroke, and…
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Tom Cotton’s Last Minute Anti-Gambling Bill
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) fears the Internet.
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Q&A on the FDA’s New E-Cigarette Rules
After years of waiting and fighting, the new rules put forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on electronic cigarettes and other non-cigarette…
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Happy “No Food Is Junk Food” Day 2016!
I can’t stand candy corn. Yes, I’m that person in the office at Halloween.
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Congress on the Verge of Lowering Beer Taxes
By today’s standards, the Founding Fathers were outright lushes. Ben Franklin was apocryphally known for his love of beer (although it turns out wine was…
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New York Rules DFS a “Game of Skill,” Maintains Ban on Internet Poker
Human beings have been gambling since at least the dawn of recorded history and perhaps one of the most enduring games is poker.
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Soda Tax Won’t Fix Waste and Corruption in Philly
Last week Philadelphia enacted a 1.5 cent per ounce tax on soda to fund the Mayor’s proposed universal pre-kindergarten system and at the same time…
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Proposed Soda Tax a Bad Deal for Philadelphia Residents
This Thursday, Philadelphia’s city council is set to approve a 1.5 cent per ounce tax on soda. The goal of the tax is to raise…
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Time to End the Failed Experiment of “Sin” Taxes
It seems like an economic no-brainer that if you can raise the cost of a good or service, people will buy and consume less of…
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Leave DFS Regulation to the States, But Don’t Kneecap Skilled Players
Congress is abuzz with the issue of gambling. Last month, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) inserted language from his failed online gambling ban into the…
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Unpopular Online Gambling Ban Sneaked Into Spending Bill
For more than two years a cadre of congressmen have worked, without any luck, to enact a bill that would create a de facto national…
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FDA’s Attack on E-Cigarette Will Cost Lives
While the public health goals of protecting consumers from possibly harmful vaping products and preventing kids from becoming addicted to nicotine are laudable goals, this…
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Advocates Attempt to Debunk Idea that Any Alcohol Is Beneficial
For most public health advocates, no amount of alcohol is safe. As they see it, any amount of alcohol increases a drinkers risk for certain…
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Utah’s Disastrous War on Electronic Cigarettes
Despite the fact that tobacco products kill nearly half a million Americans each year, it is vaping products—which help people quit smoking—that have become a…
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Congress Gets Some Common Sense on Nutritional Disclosure
Last week, members of the House approved a bill that giving customers the nutrition information they want while minimizing harm and cost. Now it's up…
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Overregulation Turns Sydney into International “Laughing Stock”
American city officials, take note: Sometimes the remedy to a purported problem is worse than the disease. This is a lesson fans of Sydney’s once…
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House Votes This Week on Common Sense Nutritional Disclosure Bill
Many, if not most proposals that make their way through Congress seem to have comically unsuitable names. However, at the end of this week the…
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CDC Alcohol and Pregnancy Scare Tactics Backfire
Are you a woman of childbearing age? Do you binge drink constantly and have unprotected sex on the reg? Well, the CDC wants you to…
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CDC Sodium Reduction Efforts: Helpful or Harmful?
Most people accept as gospel the nutritional limits set by government organizations. So, when the Centers for Disease Control releases a report saying that 89…
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Milk, Saturated Fat, and Why You Shouldn’t Take Nutrition Advice from Jezebel
Growing up lactose intolerant, I was fond of saying that drinking milk post-infanthood was unnatural. Then I found out that humans aren’t the only ones in…
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New Dietary Guidelines: Some Improvements but Also Fatal Flaws
As expected, the nutritional guidelines for 2015-2020 thankfully excised the long-standing warning against cholesterol-laden food in the wake of several decades of research demonstrating that the original…
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Craft Brewers “Selling Out” Is Good For Craft Beer Fans
This week we learned that U.K. craft brewery Camden Town was the latest in a long string of purchases by the international mega-brewery AB-InBev…
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The Good the Bad and the Big: Top 3 Consumer Policy Stories of 2015
2015 was a big year for health and consumer news. Unfortunately, many of the biggest stories were viral in the true sense of the word:…
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Holiday Liquor Laws: Where to Buy Your Christmas Cup of Cheer
Nobody wants to drive an hour over the border just to get booze, especially on Christmas Day. However, 27 states in the union still have…
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Congressional Committee Favors State-Based Legalization of Online Gambling
Wednesday’s hearing was not good for those hoping to make a case for a national online gambling prohibition. While the House Oversight Committee hearing was supposed…
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Deck Stacked at House Oversight Committee Hearing on Internet Gambling
Tomorrow the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee will hold a hearing titled, “Casino in Every Smartphone – Law Enforcement Implications,” to discuss…
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Repealed 82 Years Ago, the Spirit of Prohibition Lives On
Tomorrow, December 5, many of us will raise a glass in celebration of Repeal Day—the anniversary of the end of that disastrous experiment of alcohol prohibition…
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3 Political Food Developments to Be Thankful For
For most of us in the U.S., we don’t have to worry about getting enough food. Quite the opposite actually; holidays like Thanksgiving can be…
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House Commerce Committee Approves “Pizza” Bill to Ease Onerous Calorie Labeling Rule
While most consumers are blissfully unaware, a provision tucked into the Affordable Care Act could cause food vendors a lot of headaches. Starting on December…
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Should a Billionaire Decide Where Pennsylvanians Can Gamble?
The casino industry has been good for my home state of Pennsylvania. For whatever ills one might claim goes along with gambling, the gaming industry…
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Daily Fantasy Sports Betting: Gambling or Game of Skill?
That is the big question in New York today after that state’s attorney general issued a cease and desist order to DraftKings and FanDuel—the two…
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Federal Menu Laws Need Some Common Sense
This week, the House Energy and Commerce committee will hold a mark-up hearing on the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act (H.R. 2017), a bipartisan bill intended…
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The Real Question about Fantasy Sports Gambling the GOP Debate Missed
In this clown-car of a GOP primary, it’s inevitable that the discussion will sometimes veer onto more superficial avenues of questioning. After all, news is entertainment and…
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Glyphosate in Tampons, Oh My!
You may have seen the hilarious headlines about putting Monsanto in your vagina (if not, you’re welcome/I’m sorry). This hyperbole comes on the heels of a…
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ABI MillerCoors Merger Won’t Harm the Craft Beer Movement
The folks at Food & Water Watch are pissed. And I don’t mean “pissed” as in drunk; they are mad as hell about the proposed…
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What Will a Chaffetz Speakership Mean for Internet Freedom? Part 2
Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz recently threw his hat in the ring in a bid to replace Speaker John Boehner, after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s…
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The Death of RAWA: A Performance for an Audience of One
RAWA (H.R. 707) is dying the slow death of bills that aren’t sexy enough to draw attention away from much sexier issues. With the House…
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On Added Sugars, Canada Gets Right What the U.S. Got Wrong
Last month, I wrote about how the new nutritional labels might end up making Americans fatter and sicker. Particularly dangerous, in my opinion, is the addition…
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Has Plain Packaging Reduced Tobacco Consumption?
In 2012, the Australian government instituted a plan tobacco packing requirement—that is, a generic package that removes all stylistic aspects of packaging: colors, imagery, corporate…
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Fantasy Sports Betting Isn’t a Federal Crime, as No Sports Betting Should Be
If you watched football during the open weekend of the NFL season, you probably saw an advertisement for DraftKings or FanDuel. Part of the rapidly…
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Proposed Food Label Change Could Make Us Fatter and Sicker
There’s a new push to finalize the Food and Drug Administration’s new guidelines for nutritional panels. The changes, which include listing “added sugars” and updating…
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Time to Throw out Michelle Obama’s Lunch Program?
As I wrote in The Hill today, Congress this month will decide whether or not to continue funding Michelle Obama’s favorite Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The goal…
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Drinkers Give More than They Take
Public health advocates love to make the case that “sinners,” those folks who drink, smoke, or eat “unhealthy” foods, cost society money and that gives…
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New York City’s Salt Warning: Useless and Potentially Harmful
You may have heard on the news that New York City is, once again, on the cutting edge of interfering with consumers and businesses. This time…
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Study “Wounds” the Carbohydrate-Insulin Theory of Obesity
Last week a very interesting and, by all accounts, very well-done study made waves among the nutritional science community. For many years, the idea that reducing…
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Back to School Lunch Scares
It’s back to school season, which for many parents means spending money on new clothes, shuttling young people from sports games to ballet, and increasingly,…
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Government Nutritionists Wrong… Again
Add it to the list of things that the government got wrong when it comes to nutrition: skipping breakfast may not make you fat. It…
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Tell Us How You Really Feel about Federalism
In the nation’s capital, many of us are eagerly awaiting tonight’s Republican presidential debate. There’s no question that it will be entertaining, but will we…
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What Happens an Hour After Drinking Locally Sourced, Sustainable, Organic Kale Juice?
Remember, sugar might rot your teeth, but junk science will rot your brain.
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If You Don’t Eat Your Meat, They Can’t Have Their Taxes
If you think the brainless health nannies in the United States are bad, you should read up on the absurd proposals bursting from the cranial…
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Where Does Sen. Grassley Stand on Online Gambling?
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Happy “No Food is Junk Food” Day!
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Slate Exposes Deceitful Heart of the Anti-GMO Movement
Will Saletan has an exhaustively researched and cogently argued piece at Slate on the dishonesty of the anti-biotechnology activists and the harm they have caused.
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Federal Witch Hunt Successfully Bans Trans Fats
Ding dong the witch is dead; killed by the federal government…well, that’s if the witch was a recluse people hardly ever saw, probably hasn’t hurt…
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Raise a Glass to Lower Taxes
You might not know it, but about half the cost of your preferred alcoholic beverage is made up of taxes and fees. One man in…
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Not So Fast: Fatally Flawed Research Asserts Alcohol Taxes Save Lives
Last month, researchers at the University of Florida published a study in the American Journal of Public Health that concluded, “Increases in alcohol excise taxes, such…
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Presidential Candidate, Poker Celebs Oppose Internet Gambling Ban
What do two-time world poker champ Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson, presidential-hopeful Rand Paul, and Fraternal Order of Police President Chuck Canterbury have in common? They’ve…
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Could Alcohol Taxes Reduce Fatal Car Crashes?
A new study from the University of Florida asserts that because Illinois instituted an alcohol tax increase in 2009 and the rate of alcohol-related traffic…
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White House Petition Asks President to Veto Online Gambling Ban
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Human Achievement of the Day: The Sharing Economy
It’s the most wonderful time of year! Human Achievement Hour is once again upon us, giving us reason to pause and consider recent innovations that…
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A Bright Future
The following is a guest post by Chelsea German, Researcher and Managing Editor of HumanProgress.org. When Homo erectus first learned to control fire a million years ago, humanity…
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Chaffetz Tells States and Lotteries: If You Don’t Want an Online Gambling Ban, Introduce Your Own
According to a Gambling Compliance story (paywall) posted today, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) participated in a conference call last week with about 20 state and lottery…
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6 Ridiculous Myths about Legal Internet Gambling Busted
Should the United States government ban online poker? One billionaire casino owner thinks so. In the quest to convince Americans that they shouldn't be able…
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Victory for “Caveman” Blogger and Free Speech in North Carolina
Many people associate professional licensing with consumer safety. For example, we wouldn’t want any schlub doing surgery. But where occupational licensing laws may have started…
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New U.S. Dietary Recommendations to Correct Misunderstanding about Cholesterol, Not Fat
Thomas Jefferson once said, “If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in…
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GOP Divided on Internet Gambling Ban
As expected, members of the GOP reintroduced a measure that would create a de facto prohibition on all Internet gambling. The effort, which was written by GOP mega-donor…
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No Sprinkles in Obama’s America: Trans Fat, Hyperbole, and the Threat Nobody Is Talking about
“Say goodbye to your favorite sprinkled doughnuts,” warned Clayton Morris, guest host on Fox & Friends. “The [FDA] is now regulating Americans intake of trans fat…the…
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Bet on the Big Game? You Probably Broke the Law
Industry experts expected yesterday’s Super Bowl game to bring in around $100 million in legal sports wagering in Nevada. That’s a lot of moola, but…
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Study Shows Health Benefits of Moderate Alcohol Consumption
Alcohol is a favorite target for health nannies and politicians looking to boost revenue. Excessive drinkers, they say, cost society millions or billions of dollars!…
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Could the FDA’s New Calorie-Count Mandate Harm Winemakers?
The trade association, WineAmerica, which represents 600 wineries in the U.S., seems to think so. The group has hired a lobbyists to push the…
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Besting a Billionaire: How a Grassroots Campaign Stopped a Ban on Internet Gambling
This week we get to say goodbye to the 113th Congress. For those who believe in free markets and individual liberty, it was a doozy.
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Fraternal Order of Police Once Again Opposes Internet Gambling Ban
Once again, the Fraternal Order of Police expressed their staunch opposition to a federal prohibition on Internet gambling. In a letter sent to Sens. Harry Reid…
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Adelson’s Online Gambling Ban Losing Political Steam
It was a bad week for Sheldon Adelson. The billionaire casino owner has said he’ll spend whatever it takes to stop the spread of legal…
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How the “Stupid” American Public Pays for Gruber’s Deception
The Washington Times points out that Jonathan Gruber, our nation’s most famous sufferer of foot-in-mouth-disease, has profited greatly from the “stupid” American public to whom he…
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Journalists Called Out for Bad Reporting on Consumption Data
Being a journalist is not an easy job; it demands fast paced and high volume production. For those “wonk” journalists tasked with analyzing data-heavy reports…
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Cyanide, Tylenol and How Free Markets Make You Safer
Today is the anniversary of one of the most significant food and drug related events in recent memory. Often discussed in college business classes these…
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Study on Artificial Sweeteners Interesting But Flawed
A new study out of Israel on the possible effects of artificial sweeteners is making a lot of headlines this week. Unfortunately (and as usual)…
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CDC Study: Kids Eat Same Amount of Sodium as Worldwide Average
It’s not exactly a blood-pressure raising headline, which is probably why the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is actually…
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Cops to Destroy Rare Wine Collection in Pennsylvania
In the fifth century BCE, famous Greek tragedian Euripides supposedly said, “where this no wine there is no love.” This certainly holds true in present day…
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Newsweek’s Cover Story on Internet Gambling Plays Fast and Loose with Facts
Newsweek’s recent cover article on online gambling, “How Washington Opened the Floodgates to Online Poker, Dealing Parents a Bad Hand,” by Leah McGrath Goodman,…
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Happy There’s-No-Such-Thing-as-Junk-Food Day!
Whomever it is that decides the dates for the ever multiplying obscure holidays apparently designated today, July 21, as “Junk Food Day.” While the origin and…
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FDA’s Trans Fat “Ban” a First Foray into Controlling Americans’ Diets
Last November, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced its plan to revoke the “Generally Recognized As Safe” designation for partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs),…
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Celebrate Food Freedom this 4th of July
“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a…
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FDA’s Salt Phobia a Waste of Money
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced last week plans to phase in “voluntary” reduction in the level of sodium in foods produced by manufacturers and…
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Friday June 6th: Have a Doughnut for Freedom
Do you know what today is? If you said D-Day, you’d be right. But this year, June 6 also marks another, less well known occasion.
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Reihan Salam’s Argument for Alcohol “Prohibition Lite” Doesn’t Hold Water
In Slate recently, Reihan Salam argued that as America eases up on the criminalization of marijuana use it ought to consider ramping up the war…
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No, Gov. Perry, a Ban on Internet Gambling Won’t Protect the Internet or Individual Freedom
In an attempt to save face, Texas Governor Rick Perry is trying to justify his support for a federal online gambling ban by claiming that it’s the…
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Republican Internet Gambling Ban Undermines States’ and Individual Rights
Despite rhetoric that we need to “restore” the Federal Wire Act in order to protect states’ rights, Republican lawmakers are pushing a bill that…
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Pseudoscience and Clickbaiting Results in Beer Fear
There’s a lot of pseudoscience about food out there. From genetically modified crops to organic foods to corn syrup, to preservatives, passionate opinions abound, but…
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Victory for Maryland Parents and Consumers: Energy Drink Ban Voted Down
A bill that would have banned the sale of energy drinks for minors in Maryland was recently voted down in committee almost unanimously. The…
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Professional Licensing: A Risk to the Free Markets and Freedom of Speech
From physicians to dentists to lawyers, the licensing requirements of many professions are well known—but for bloggers? A recent case in North Carolina demonstrates the…