The Competitive Enterprise Institute believes the proper role for government is to provide consumers with accurate, unbiased guidance that informs consumer choice. But, whether it is the substances we prefer, how we entertain ourselves, what dietary habits we maintain, or how we pursue personal health, consumers ought to have the right to make decisions for themselves.
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EPA Eases Limits on ‘Super Pollutants,’ Claiming It Will Lower Food Prices
The Trump administration is loosening restrictions on “super pollutant” chemicals that are highly potent greenhouse gases, claiming that allowing their increased use will drive down…
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Quartz tariffs are looming and your kitchen could pay the price
Earlier this week, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that increased quartz imports are injuring the domestic quartz industry. The petitioners, the Quartz…
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Illiberalism: The bipartisan tradition
After experiencing the horrors of World War I and fearing a second World War could be imminent, Ludwig von Mises wrote Liberalism: The Classical…
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FDA Tobacco Regulation Bill: A Trojan Horse?
PR Watch has an interesting story on the cynical baptist-bootlegger alliance behind the bill to give the FDA oversight over the tobacco industry, which…
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DDT Deniers Deny Science
DDT-deniers—those who would rather let people die that allow DDT use to fight malaria-carrying mosquitoes—have been critiquing our blog posts on the topic…
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The Uncreative Indestructibility of Modern Farming
Over at the Mises Institute’s website, Dan McLaughlin highlights a little-discussed pernicious effect of U.S. farm policy: the short-circuiting of the market’s creative destruction.
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DDT Saves Africans from Malaria
Donald Roberts has an interesting Op-Ed in the New York Times about the crucial role of DDT in preventing the spread of malaria in…
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Drug lag — precaution or pipelines?
According to a CNN Money article, a report released yesterday shows that the FDA has been cracking down on new drug approvals. Pharmaceutical companies…
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Foreign Aid Kills
Foreign food aid often causes, rather than alleviates, hunger, by destroying the basis of the farm economy in the country that receives the aid, as…
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Getting the Word Out
Good news: Today’s Wall Street Journal highlights the recent study on DDT benefits in repelling mosquitoes and battling resistance issues. This study was highlighted…
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Bad Information = Dangerous Consequences
Anti-DDT activists might read this with glee: Misinformation about DDT risks is undermining its use in Kampala, Uganda. A Ugandan news website reports that…
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New Offense: Walking While Ripped
Nanny says eat healthily, exercise, and grow up big and strong. The Nanny State says don’t look too well-developed or we’ll arrest you. Seriously. It…
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How Dare You Help Out!
The BBC reports that an old woman has “has been told she must stop tending a public flower bed unless she agrees to wear…
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Another case of plastiphobia?
Typical of Reuters' science articles, there's a scare element in an article today titled “Panel worried about baby bottle chemical.” The article was referring…
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No Excuse for Resistance to DDT
Anti-DDT activists in the environmental movement often suggest we should stop using this chemical to save people from malaria and other diseases because mosquitoes will…
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America’s Black Market in Raw Milk
Criminals continue to peddle their illegal wares in America, as heroic law enforcement officers seek to stamp out a dangerous black market. No, the product…
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More on Bad Court Ruling Against Terminally Ill
“Terminally ill patients do not have a constitutional right to be treated with experimental drugs, even if they likely will be dead before the medicine…
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Credit for Codex decision?
In your post commenting on the rejection by Codex of the use of the Precautionary Principle, I’d like to point out that giving the…
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UN Group Rejects Precautionary Principle
The Codex Alimentarius Commission, a joint UN Food and Agricultural Organization-World Health Organization food safety standard-setting body, has apparently agreed to exclude the…
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A Bridge Collapse Too Far
A lot of theories are being floated for what exactly caused the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. The real answer, of course,…
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Court Rejects Terminally Ill Patients’ Chance to Live, Upholds FDA Red Tape
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled 8-to-2 in Abigail Alliance v. Von Eschenbach that terminally ill people cannot challenge the FDA's ban…
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Hatefull to the Nose, Harmefull to the Braine, Dangerous to the Lungs
If you’re looking for early health warnings about tobacco, Richard, you can go a lot further. The title of this post was the judgment of…
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FDA Tobacco Regulation Assailed
In the New York Times, Patrick Basham explains why the bill to give the Food and Drug Administration the duty to regulate tobacco is…
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Goofy’s Coffin Nails
When it comes to the politics of tobacco regulation, one of the most important dates is January 11, 1964, when then-Surgeon General Luther L. Terry…
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Bridge Collapse Falsely Blamed on Low Taxes by Europeans
A Dutch friend of a CEI staffer passed on the fact that some Dutch and German newspapers today are filled with hateful comments online about…
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FDA Tobacco Regulation Clears Senate Committee
A Senate committee has just voted 13-to-8 in favor of the bill to give the FDA jurisdiction over tobacco products and the tobacco industry.
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Nanny State In Montgomery County
Montgomery County, Maryland, is considering a law that would require food chains to post nutritional information about their food. In terms of its intrusion…
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Drug Price Ceilings Overturned
An appeals court ruling today struck down Washington, D.C.’s price ceilings for prescription drugs. In Biotechnology Industry Organization v. District of Columbia, the Court…
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Whole Foods Merger Analysis
I may be going out on a limb here, but I predict, on the basis of what happened in court yesterday, that the Whole Foods…
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How much will the Farm Bill cost the average family?
WashingtonWatch today listed the cost of the farm bill (H.R. 2419) just passed by the House last Friday. It seems like the average American…
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FDA Tobacco Regulation Bill Tramples Free Speech, Advertisers Say
Advertisers are objecting to the bill that would subject the tobacco industry to FDA regulation, saying that its restrictions on tobacco advertising would violate…
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Farm Bill becomes a partisan pork party
Today, the House passed the 2007 Farm Bill — with a vote of 231 – 191, along partisan lines. [Corrected] The fly in the…
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FDA Regulation: Harmful to Smokers’ Health?
Congress is on the verge of passing a bill that would subject tobacco products to FDA regulation. The FDA regulation bill would make it…
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Sugar amendment offered during Farm Bill debate
During debate on the House floor on the Farm Bill this morning, sugar was on the agenda in the form of an amendment…
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Farm Bill debate starts by focusing on tax increases on businesses
House floor debate on the 2007 Farm Bill — H.R. 2419 — began at 5:45 p.m. on Thursday, with a contentious beginning focusing on a…
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“He Only Saved a Billion People”
Newsweek has a story on Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, whose advances in biotechnology saved a billion people from starvation in…
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Update on 2007 Farm Bill — Administration issues critique — and warning
On the eve of House consideration of the 2007 Farm Bill, the Bush Administration has just sent a statement from the Office of Management…
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Farm bill scheduled for House tomorrow — Bush will veto, says Ag Secretary
Today Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns said that the President may veto the 2007 Farm Bill, scheduled for full House consideration tomorrow, because it…
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Nonagenarians in the news
Nonagenarians — people in their nineties — are making news this month. Last week Norman Borlaug received the Congressional Gold Medal for his lifetime…
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More on subsidies for dead farmers — in the GAO’s words
Here’s a copy of the Government Accountability Office’s report on large farm subsidy payments made to dead farmers, which was released today at a…
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The downside of bipartisanship — 2007 Farm Bill
At an hour-and-a-half press conference this morning, House Agriculture Committee members, perhaps sensitive to revelations that dead farmers have been receiving huge farm subsidies,…
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Hands off VOIP
Today's New York Times carries a story about the sudden failure and shutdown of my former home telephone company, SunRocket. Although it obviously…
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Anti-AIDS Spending Backfires
A U.N. effort to reduce the spread of AIDS to children by encouraging HIV-positive mothers to use formula rather than breast feeding has backfired…
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Offset Your Lunch?
The next time you grab a burger for lunch, you’re part of the global warming problem. That, at least, is the upshot of a…
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FDA Authority: Less Is More
Our good friend (and adjunct fellow) Henry Miller of the Hoover Institute responds in the pages of Regulation to charges that the FDA…
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Just Don’t Drink Water?
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) doesn’t want you to drink bottled water because it’s a waste of resources. Tap water is just as good they…
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Farm bill — Ag Committee gives strong support to energy title
Today at the Agriculture Committee debate on the 2007 Farm Bill (see the live streaming video here), a significant portion of the debate focused…
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A Man for All Seasons, Norman Borlaug
Yesterday Norman Borlaug received the Congressional Gold Medal, America's highest civilian award. This humble and unpretentious microbiologist and plant breeder is credited with saving over…
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Worthy Pleasure Seekers of the World Unite
Today the Senate Finance Committee is considering the “Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act of 2007,” which, according to James Thorner of…
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How sweet it is — for sugar producers
As the House Agriculture Committee begins debate on the 2007 Farm Bill today, eight public interest groups sent a letter to committee members…
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Government Wisdom
The House Agriculture Committee’s homepage features a message from the chairman that includes this line: Every American who eats should recognize the importance of…
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Syndicated Vindication
Another CEI milestone – we’ve made it into the popular syndicated newspaper column The Straight Dope (the column has published since 1973 under the…
News Release
XM-Sirius Merger Should Go Forward
Washington, D.C., July 9, 2007—The proposed merger of satellite radio companies XM and Sirius should be cleared by the Federal Communications Commission, according to…
