Health advocates need to put heat on California "GO" Committee to rescue tobacco control legislation
July 22, 2015
For years (decades?) the Assembly Government Organization Committee (GO) is where the Assembly Speaker sends tobacco control legislation to die.
It served this function recently when it killed two bills that had passed the Senate, one to include e-cigarettes in California’s clean indoor air law and youth access law and another to raise the age of purchase of tobacco to 21.
Adam Gray (D-Merced), of course, denied that all the tobacco money he accepted had any effect on his policy decisions. According to a story in the San Jose Mercury News,
Gray refuted health advocates' claims that the $38,100 in campaign contributions he's accepted from tobacco companies over the last 2 1/2 years, including $8,400 he received in May, has influenced his work under the Capitol dome. He also denied having any contact with Big Tobacco about the bill.
"My re-election campaign and my public policy work are entirely separate issues," Gray said. "I don't talk about them together because campaign contributions never have any impact on the public policy decisions I make as a lawmaker."
July 20, 2015
As part of the process of developing an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use in California, the Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and the ACLU and have created the Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy “to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of various policy questions related to the possibility of legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana for adults in California. The Commission has held several public meetings and will be preparing briefing papers on a range of issues.
While the Commission will not write the initiative – drug reform advocates will do that – the results of the Commission’s deliberations will likely be important in shaping the policy discourse around any marijuana legalization.
July 17, 2015
Since June 30, Comcast released two PG-13 films with smoking: Self/less and Terminator Genesys. This reduces the number of MPAA-member companies with 100% smokefree records for their 2015 youth-rated films from four to three: Disney, Time Warner and Viacom.
It is yet another example of why we need the R rating to protect kids.
The observation is care of Jonathan Polansky based on film data collected by Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!, a project of Breathe California.
This item is also posted on the Smokefree Movies blog at http://smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/blog/comcast-falls-wagon-and-releases-tw....
July 17, 2015
The one Disney film label unnamed in Disney’s policy update is Touchstone, which it uses to release PG-13 films from DreamWorks under a seven-year distribution agreement. Along with that agreement, Disney also maintains a $250 million loan facility for DreamWorks. In effect, then, Disney and DreamWorks enjoy a deal structure very common among the major studios: the distributor-studio finances, markets and distributes a film made by a second-party producer.
Other major studios’ tobacco depiction policies also do not cover these sorts of arrangements either, giving the studios the flexibility they need to allow smoking in films by producers with which the studios have continuing, profitable relationships. All the studios have often given such producers a pass.
July 11, 2015
Although 15 months ago FDA released its proposed “deeming rule” that would give FDA authority to regulate e-cigarettes and other harmful tobacco products, the final rule has still not been issued, and these unregulated nicotine products remain on the market to addict kids and other new users, and to keep current and dual users addicted.
While the final rule will likely have little practical effect on controlling the exploding e-cigarette use, especially among kids, it does take the first tiny first step to controlling the unfettered marketing of e-cigarettes and other new tobacco products. So the e-cig industry (which includes the major cigarette companies) is worried that even the minimal restrictions that the final rule would impose would curtail the development and marketing of e-cigs, vaporizers, snus, and the next generation of heat-not-burn traditional cigarettes.