July 27, 2015
On July 23, 2015, I posted my first comment on Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom’s Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on Marijuana Policy releasing its report “Pathways Report: Policy Options for Regulating Marijuana in California,” (link) with primarily positive critiques. The report addressed important public health issues that in many cases aligned with the Tobacco Education Research Oversight Committee’s (TEROC) recommendations to the Blue Ribbon Commission (which likely were received after the report had been finalized so probably did not influence the report’s language).
Rachel Barry, a member of my research team and I have now completed a side-by-side comparison of the TEROC and BRC recommendations (table below, PDF).
July 23, 2015
On July 21, 2015 Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy released its report “Pathways Report: Policy Options for Regulating Marijuana in California,” which provides broad policy recommendations on legalizing marijuana in California. The report recognizes the potential problems of a wealthy profit-motivated marijuana industry and the potential damage to public health.
Overall, this report is thoughtful and contained several strong recommendations on local control, public usage, health messaging, research priorities, and marketing/advertising restrictions supportive of tobacco control.
It recognizes that big money and corporatization of marijuana poses serious problems for public health. This is probably the most important conclusion in the report.
“Develop a highly regulated market with enforcement and oversight capacity from the beginning, not an unregulated free market; this industry should not be California’s next Gold Rush.” (P. 23)
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....