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The US officially raises the tobacco buying age to 21
A new law in the United States that prohibits the sale of tobacco products to anyone under the age of 21 is now in effect, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.
Last week, President Donald Trump signed the new minimum age into law as part of a sweeping spending bill. On Friday, the FDA noted on its website that "it is now illegal for a retailer to sell any tobacco product -- including cigarettes, cigars and e-cigarettes -- to anyone under 21. FDA will provide additional details on this issue as they become available."
The increased age restriction for tobacco purchases is one of several provisions outside of the spending measures themselves attached to the broader $1.4 trillion spending agreement.
Also at ABC.
Previously: California to Permit Assisted Suicide Starting June 9th, Could Raise Smoking Age to 21
California's Legal Smoking Age Set to Rise to 21
Tobacco Roundup
U.S. Surgeon General Decries Teenage Vaping
Oregon Becomes the Fifth State to Raise the Tobacco Age Limit to 21
San Francisco Bans E-Cigarette Sales
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 30 2019, @12:02PM (2 children)
This is what I think most people fail to grasp about diet and health - your gut is a dynamic environment, what "works" in one state can be totally bad for you in another. It's not "one simple trick" that works for all people all the time, it's an ongoing and usually dynamic relationship between your body, your colony of microbes, and the food you eat.
Our older son used to be VERY sensitive to even the smallest amounts of gluten, today we can get away with small "infractions" as mom calls them and he doesn't seem to suffer, but just ignoring it and eating "normal" will still bring him down. The other one doesn't seem affected one way or the other by gluten or gluten free. Mom and I are old enough that we feel inflammation in the joints and similar things if we eat too much gluten bearing foods, I have a knee that literally starts making noise while descending stairs when my inflammation is up - cut the gluten completely for a couple of weeks and it stops doing that, this has been true for the past 15+ years now.
Yeah, the thing I hate most about it is the so-called vaccine injury fund which (from my perspective) is a sham of a justification for how safe they are. I think one autism case has managed to successfully sue for damages, but you have to have such unreasonable levels of resources to successfully pursue a case and proof of injury by the vaccine which you personally collect, because the establishment sure as hell won't collect it for you, that it really heavily skews the results in the fund's favor. Do vaccines give everybody Autism? clearly not. Are vaccines 100% responsible for the recent (last 30 years) upturn in Autism cases? I think also, clearly not. However, are vaccines partly responsible for the severity of symptoms in some significant fraction of the 175 new Autism cases diagnosed in the US every day? I don't know, but my gut says yes, and being personally responsible for 2 of those cases the apparent cost/benefit ratio was too high for us to continue taking chances of another fever of 108.
Maybe, but the cynic in me says that they need to keep up this unified front of "vaccines cause no harm" so any research into things like allergy prediction are going to have serious funding problems. If they have even partial success with that kind of research it could trigger massive liabilities in the vaccine injury fund by providing supporting evidence for potentially millions of cases (roughly 20 years per million ASD diagnoses in the US).
I think it's possible, but I'm not sure I'd consider that an improvement in quality of life, at least not in the early years, having to run constant chemical analyses on your body to tailor your diet/medication regime just to stay reasonably healthy. Again, if the conspiracy theorist nutjobs are right (and once in a while even a totally random nutjob is correct) and "big agriculture" has genetically/chemically engineered our wheat supply into something that's harmful to 2+% of the population, that's going to be a brouhaha that will make the lead in gasoline fiasco look tame.
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday December 30 2019, @02:26PM (1 child)
You're quite sage and rational.
Two of my cynically favorite phrases, which are quite interrelated: "sweeping generalization" (seems to be proliferating with the increased usage of the 'net) and "popular misconception".
Not a doctor (regrettably) nor expert, but AFAIK an allergic reaction test is a fairly simple inexpensive thing, generally done by putting a tiny sample of the substance on the skin, covering it, and checking for reaction for a day or so. Again, not expert, I just know people who have had it done.
Absolutely agree re: food / gut biology. It's absolute science. Trouble is, someone gets wind of some of it and advertises in those absurd printings like "national inquirer" and then many people glom onto it, and others overly shun it. And as you mentioned, what works well for one person may not at all for another.
I've often thought about cravings- it's possible your body knows what you need. Occasionally real medical diagnosis involves learning the patient's cravings- some of which can be harmful of course- depends on the substance.
My thinking in terms of future medicine, it should be fairly simple to do chemical element testing, coupled with gene understanding, and figure out who is particularly sensitive to what. I envision a pill, similar to a "pillcam" that would do chemical analysis. I have much more to write but no time... Generally I think there's not anywhere near enough diagnostic testing done. And it all needs to become much less expensive. Right now there's no incentive to reduce costs and increase efficiency of diagnostic testing, but again, no time...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 30 2019, @03:54PM
I believe in Darwin, and I believe that _most_ cravings are beneficial to the craver, or at least their net capacity to procreate... however, I also believe in parasitic control of hosts, and that many cravings are more beneficial to the gut microbes than they are to the host.
Generally, I agree, but after three decades in the medical device industry I can somewhat authoritatively inform you: these things are driven by market forces. Lower cost anything is difficult to develop because that lower cost has to couple with enough market expansion to make the net change a positive impact to overall profits, otherwise: there are higher priority projects out there that will make a bigger net positive impact to overall profits and in a world of limited resources: CAGR is king.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]