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.
Consumer Freedom Issue Areas
Featured Posts
News Release
Disney sues FCC over alleged ‘retaliatory campaign’ against ABC: CEI analysis
Today, Disney filed a First Amendment lawsuit against President Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC), seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in response to the…
News Release
FDA succeeds in approving new flu vaccine: CEI comment
The FDA has approved a flu vaccine made with mRNA technology, the same technology used for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, the company announced on…
Blog
Can Trump proposed rule pull the plug on bad appliance regulations?
Many Americans dislike federal home appliance regulations, perhaps nobody more so than the current White House occupant, who routinely rails against them at his…
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Blog
Big Mickey is Watching
In today’s DC Examiner, columnist Melanie Scarborough discusses the implications of a disturbing exchange she witnessed recently. While shopping the other day, I was…
Blog
Tate Modern museum — where’s the “precautionary principle”?
Read an article about precaution and risk — in the Arts section of The New York Times today. Seems that the Tate…
Study
Politically Determined Entertainment Ratings and How to Avoid Them
Full Document Available in PDF When they…
Blog
Celebrate the Repeal of Prohibition, YouTube Style
Raise a glass to 21st Amendment!…
Blog
ENDA vs. Free Speech
Earlier, I discussed ENDA, a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would ban most employers from engaging in sexual orientation discrimination. While…
News Release
Smoking Prevention Bill May Backfire
Contact: Jody Clarke, 202.331.2252 Washington, DC, October 2, 2007—As the House Committee on Energy and Commerce prepares to hold a hearing tomorrow…
Letters
Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act
Full Document Available in PDFs Dear Representative: We are writing to express our concerns…
Blog
The chickens come home to roost . . .
The corn-ethanol boom is continuing to spike up costs for food producers. Tyson, the beef and poultry titan, announced yesterday that its costs were up…
Blog
Alarming Waste
Today’s Washington Post includes a story on bisphenol A, a chemical that has been used to make flexible, clear plastic products–including baby bottles–since the…
Blog
Jenkins in the WSJ on the subprime shambles
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.’s piece in the Wall Street Journal today (“Payback,” subscription required) is a thoughtful and cogent assessment of some aspects of…
Blog
No such thing as a victimless ban
UK Telegraph columnist A.N. Wilson weighs in on a little-noticed pernicious effect of nanny statism. What do the following have in common:…
Blog
Chesapeake Bay Foundation — more corn acreage, more pollution
Growing more corn for ethanol in the mid-Atlantic region will mean increased pollution in rivers, streams and the Chesapeake Bay, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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.
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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,…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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.
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
“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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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,…
