SACRAMENTO, Calif. — One of the major public health crusades in recent years has been a push to ban the sale of flavored-tobacco products — something California adopted statewide in 2023. “It will be a point of deep pride and personal privilege as a father of four and as someone who’s had many, many family members die at the hands of the tobacco industry to sign that bill,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom as Senate Bill 793 made its way toward his desk. The tobacco industry then qualified a referendum in an attempt to overturn the law, but voters sided with the governor and his allies by nearly a two-to-one margin. That initiative campaign delayed the law’s implementation, but didn’t make much headway among the political class or voters. Supporters of the ban mainly targeted e-cigarettes, most of which contain flavors. They also succeeded in banning lower-risk nicotine pouches that contain flavors. Yet two working papers released this week by the well-respected National Bureau of Economic Research confirm what other studies (and this writer) have long argued: Such bans will undermine rather than improve public health. The reasons aren’t hard to understand. Most smokers and vapers are addicted to nicotine. Every nicotine product in the country is labeled with warnings, including one noting that “nicotine is an addictive substance.” People who are addicted to substances have a strong craving to obtain them. Therefore, if the state or localities vastly limit the access to nicotine products that are demonstrably safer while still allowing access to the most dangerous products, more nicotine-addicted people will choose the latter — and not worry about the long-term health consequences of doing so. Forgive me for slow-walking this point, but lawmakers routinely rejected this argument. In the working paper, “Comprehensive E-cigarette Flavor Bans and Tobacco Use among Youth and Adults,” the researchers came to the following conclusion: “We find evidence that young adults decrease their use of the banned flavored e-cigarettes as well as their overall e-cigarette use by about two percentage points, while increasing cigarette use.” They found little effect of such bans on adult smokers, but “some suggestive evidence of increasing cigarette use” among youth.  The researchers found that “statewide comprehensive flavor bans may have generated an unintended consequence by encouraging substitution towards traditional smoking.” These comprehensive bans were pushed specifically as a means to protect teens from smoking. The approach seemed nonsensical, in that they banned certain adult-only products to limit their use by non-adult populations who already were forbidden from purchasing them. But that was supporters’ main argument, and it appears to be having the opposite effect. The other study, “The Effect of E-Cigarette Flavor Bans on Tobacco Use,” garnered similar results: “Advocates for sales restrictions on flavored e-cigarettes argue that flavors appeal to young people and lead them down a path to nicotine addiction. … Using data from the State and National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys, we find that the adoption of an ENDS (Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems) flavor restriction reduces frequent and everyday youth ENDS use by 1.2 to 2.5 percentage points. … However, we also detect evidence of an unintended effect of ENDS flavor restrictions that is especially clear among 18-20-year-olds: inducing substitution to combustible cigarette smoking.” These may be unintended consequences, but they weren’t unexpected. Before the statewide ban went into place, Yale researchers surveyed the impact of San Francisco’s flavored ban. Per a Yale News report, “After the ban’s implementation, high school students’ odds of smoking conventional cigarettes doubled in San Francisco’s school district relative to trends in districts without the ban, even when adjusting for individual demographics and other tobacco policies.” The publication quoted that study’s author, who made the obvious point: “While neither smoking cigarettes nor vaping nicotine are safe per se, the bulk of current evidence indicates substantially greater harms from smoking, which is responsible for nearly one in five adult deaths annually. Even if it is well-intentioned, a law that increases youth smoking could pose a threat to public health.” Great Britain’s top health agency, Public Health England, reports that vaping is 95 percent safer than smoking — a point also known long before California approved its law. These studies should serve as a wakeup call for those public health officials who are seriously interested in improving public health rather than simply waging a crusade against Big Tobacco. Abstinence is always the preferred option, but vaping or the use of pouches with pharmaceutical-grade nicotine are far safer than the main alternative. As I reported for The American Spectator, the Biden administration is sadly echoing California’s policy. The Biden administration strongly opposed efforts by Congress to limit the Food and Drug Administration’s “ability to protect the nation’s youth from tobacco products by prohibiting FDA from eliminating menthol in cigarettes, flavors in cigars and from setting science-based nicotine standards that reduce the addictive properties of these products.”  Ironically, the administration backed away from its stated health concerns when it feared political consequences. As AP reported, the administration recently announced that it “is indefinitely delaying a long-awaited menthol cigarette ban, a decision that infuriated anti-smoking advocates but could avoid a political backlash from Black voters in November.” Unlike vapes, menthol cigarettes are truly dangerous — but they are the preferred choice among African American smokers. The evidence increasingly suggests that nicotine users will choose the most dangerous products if they can’t have access to safer ones. Progressive politicians love to yammer about protecting children, yet their own tobacco policies put them at risk. What are the chances California officials and the Biden administration will recognize the latest science? Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org. The post The Dangers of Public Health Zealotry appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Mainstream media outlets have highlighted (and even exulted in) the massive growth of Americans embracing a “LGBTQ+” identity in recent years. They have routinely acknowledged that this shift is heavily tilted toward teens and younger adults. Often more muted is another observation: that by huge margins these increases have been disproportionately driven by those embracing bisexual identities. Further acknowledgment that this explosion in bisexual identity among the young has been heavily driven by females, not males, tends to be even more subdued. All of this was evident in a USA Today piece this past March that covered a seminal Gallup poll documenting the sexual orientation and gender identity of American adults ages 18 and up, headlined “Portion of US Adults Identifying as LGBTQ Has More Than Doubled in Last 12 Years.” A more accurate headline would have been, “Explosion of Young Females Describing Themselves as Bisexual Is the Biggest Driver in the Growth in Non-Heterosexual Identity Among U.S. Adults.” But if the barely hidden agenda is further establishing “LGBTQ+” as statistically normal, the broad brush is preferable. That Gallup report showed that, among females in 2023, 20.7 percent of Generation Z, 9 percent of Millennials, 2.8 percent of Generation X, 4/10th of 1 percent of Baby Boomers, and 1/10th of 1 percent of the Silent Generation identified as bisexual. The comparable percentages for males were, in order, 6.9 percent, 2.5 percent, 0.7 percent each for Generation X and Baby Boomers, and 0.2 percent for the Silent Generation. The total LGBTQ+ percentage for females was 28.5 percent for Generation Z, and 12.4 percent for Millennials, compared to, respectively, a far lower 10.6 percent and 5.4 percent for males. Meanwhile, 72.6 percent of both Generation Z and Millennial non-heterosexual females were bisexual, compared to, respectively, 65.1 percent and 46.3 percent for males. These numbers make it clear how outsized the contribution of bisexual females is to the overall growth in LGBTQ+ identity in the United States. We have known about this shift to bisexualism, particularly among young females, for a long time. For example, in 2004, the Washington Post covered the growing contingent of teenage girls who were open to sex and romance with both females and males — and who often resisted the “bisexual” label or lesbian identity in favor of cool terms like “gayish” or even “queer.” The Post referred to this as the “partway gay” phenomenon.  The large and prestigious National Survey of Family Growth, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for decades, enables us to track the rapid increase in bisexual identity over time, by age group, with laser-sharp specificity. I analyzed it, distinguishing those 15 to 17, 18 to 22, 23 to 27, and 28 to 32. In the NSFG 2011-13 cycle, the percentages of female describing themselves as bisexual or equivalent were 10 percent, 8 percent, 7.4 percent, and 4.8 percent, respectively. By their 2017-19 cycle, only six years later, those numbers had risen to 15.4 percent, 17.8 percent, 14.7 percent, and 10.8 percent, respectively. The percentages for females ages 15 to 17 had increased by over a third, and for those 18 to 22 by more than double. Now, compare those last percentages with those for males, among the same age groups in the same order — 3.5 percent, 5.1 percent, 3 percent, 2.3 percent. There was certainly growth in bisexual identity among males, with comparable percentages in 2011-13 being 1.3 percent, 1.9 percent, 3 percent, and 2.6 percent. But, once again, the big story about skyrocketing bisexual identity is its growth in females, not males. By a long shot. Sadly, many of these females flocking to embrace a bisexual identity do not know some of the harsh realities of the landscape they are stepping into, at least not until it is too late. Without at all being speculative or bigoted, there are at least two things they should be aware of before making the leap into active bisexuality. First, they will not necessarily be accepted within the gay and lesbian community. Quite the contrary, as those willing to speak up among the latter are happy to admit. Second, within their intimate partnerships, they will be much more likely than heterosexual or lesbian females to experience violence.  On that first point, even quick Google searches reveal that bisexuals are often not liked or embraced by the LGBTQ+ community. They face rejection by both the latter and straights, which is often called “double closet, “double discrimination,” “double hurt,” or “double stigma.” The growth of those identifying as bisexual has not alleviated this problem. One writer for a gay publication described lesbians as “notorious for rejecting bisexual women as potential friends and … partners.” This double rejection of bisexuals has negative mental health consequences, discussed for example here, here, and here.  On the second point, the elevated risk for “intimate partner violence” for bisexuals is enormous. This was abundantly documented in a well-regarded 2013 report using data from a large (16,507 adults, 9,086 of whom were women) 2010 survey of American adults’ experience of intimate partner violence, which I also discussed in my recent American Spectator column on intimate partner violence among lesbians. (Note: for female bisexuals, things are a whole lot worse.) The following percentages are those who have ever experienced such violence within intimate partnerships, and only include females. Twenty-two percent of bisexuals had been raped (completed, attempted, or fueled by alcohol or drugs), compared to 9.1 percent for heterosexuals. What about other forms of sexual violence? The difference was 40 percent versus 15.3 percent. Then there was stalking (“harassing or threatening tactics … that is both unwanted and causes fear or safety concerns”) — which bisexuals experienced at a rate of 31.1 percent compared to 10.2 percent for heterosexuals. Moving on to physical violence, the difference between bisexuals and heterosexuals ever experiencing slapping, pushing, or shoving was 55.1 percent versus 29.8 percent. What about more severe physical violence? The difference was 49.3 percent versus 23.6 percent. And then there was psychological aggression: 76.2 percent versus 47.5 percent. For the most serious forms of this, classified as “coercive control,” the difference was 68.8 percent versus 40.5 percent.  Rejected within the larger LGBTQ+ community, often isolated and lonely, and astronomically more likely to suffer violence from intimate partners. This is not a pleasant picture. Compassion and common sense tell us that young females need to be informed about the realities of living out a bisexual orientation that so many are obviously viewing as “hip” and “liberating,” a pathway out of that increasingly “uncool” straight identity. Then, at least if they proceed, they will be forewarned. But I doubt these grim facts are being covered much in sex ed classes. Maybe it is time for this factual negligence to end. READ MORE: Intimate Partner Violence In Lesbian Relationships The post Explosion of Female Bisexuality appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Our readers in Texas will probably laugh at this column, seeing as though what it will discuss has been a known item in the Lone Star State since 1982. That’s when the first Buc-ee’s opened in Lake Jackson, northeast of Houston. But if you’ve never been to Buc-ee’s, you might consider taking a road trip somewhere along a route where one of the more than 50 locations can be found. Because if you do, you’ll come away with a freshly filled reservoir of faith that the America you know, love, and grew up with is not dead, and in fact thrives — at least in the not-so-small oases where a goofy-looking, smiling cartoon beaver stares down from a giant sign. Buc-ee’s is about as pure a distillation of American capitalism as there has ever been. Think of a cross between a convenience store and Godzilla, a nuclear explosion of the free-market impulse that creates so many revenue streams and product lines as to reach a level of wildly entertaining absurdity. It’s like McDonald’s, Walmart, and Disney World converged on a 7-Eleven, and the fusion reaction gave birth to a capitalistic T-Rex with big buck teeth and a goofy smile on his face to serve the finest fountain drinks and junk food man has ever seen. With the cheapest gas and cleanest restrooms — typically more than 30 urinals and 50 stalls in each store, by the way — that you’ll find anywhere. I’m bringing this up, of course, because while I’d heard rumblings about Buc-ee’s, it wasn’t until Wednesday when I finally had the full experience. My Buc-ee’s epiphany came in the middle of nowhere. The Buc-ee’s website lists Store #42 as residing in Loxley, Alabama, though the actual address of the place is in Robertsdale, Alabama. And the address says the store is on County Road 68, but that isn’t what you see when you turn in. You stop at a light after exiting I-10 and turning south, and your cross street that leads you to Convenience Store Nirvana is … Buc-ee’s Boulevard. And when you arrive, there are literally dozens of gas pumps. Dozens. I’m talking about 100 of them. People are everywhere. At 9 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, it looked like Talladega or the Daytona 500. There might have been 1,000 people in and around the store when we pulled in. A few of them were getting ice out of the TWENTY different freezers set along the outside of one wall. Those were placed next to a selection of gigantic barbecue smokers, which were in turn next to a selection of cast-iron fire pits for sale. And inside it looked like Grand Central Station. I’ll admit I was momentarily dizzy. In the far-right corner was a bank of Icee dispensers. I counted 16 different flavors of Icees. Then there were 30 different coffee dispensers pumping out some of the hottest coffee known to mankind. Not to mention a bank of drink fountains offering every kind of soda drink you’ve ever heard of and quite a few you haven’t. Every manner of commercial snack known to man is sold at Buc-ee’s, from Funyuns to Snickers bars. But that isn’t significant. What is significant is the Beaver Nuggets, perhaps the world’s best caramel corn sold in embarrassingly large bags. Or the more than 20 different flavors of beef jerky, available in delicatessen-style displays along the back wall (the Mesquite Peppered jerky and the Cherry Maple jerky were the two I fell in love with). But the Buc-ee’s brisket tacos might just be the greatest convenience-store food ever invented. All of the employees smile, hustle, and joke with the customers. There’s a Black Friday rush atmosphere to the place, and yet there is no line at the checkout counters, every single one of which is manned by a cashier who works efficiently and enthusiastically — and for a reason: Buc-ee’s pays their employees exceptionally well. A sign at the gas pumps advertises $18-an-hour wages for the lowest positions, up to $200,000 per year or more for a store manager. It’s a capitalistic shangri-la. No better shrine to productive, happy prosperity has ever graced our beautiful planet. It’s a place that utterly trumps, somewhat hilariously so, all of the grifting and griping of the American Left. There are no social problems at Buc-ee’s. Beef jerky knows no race, and brisket tacos know no gender. Beaver nuggets and fried pecans have no politics. And if you believe any of this harms the planet, we laugh at your derangement. Greta Thunberg might just be fed to the beaver if she were ever to complain about a Buc-ee’s. It might sound stupid to say it: this is about as close to heaven as roadside commerce can get. I’ve fallen in love with Buc-ee’s. I get it now. I might be a late arrival, but I’m now firmly in the cult. I want one of those goofy beaver statues that graces the front entrance, I crave another of their delicious sausage biscuits and the Beaver Tots that go with it, and I’ll be thinking about the Cookies & Cream–flavored fudge until I wander back that way to have it again. And I’ve got to have one of these stores in my hometown. So do you. America isn’t dead. America lives and breathes. The real signal of resistance to woke communism isn’t the Gadsden flag or the Appeal to Heaven flag, though those are wonderful in their own right. No, it’s that cartoon beaver. Buc-ee’s might just lead the counterrevolution. And if so, we’re in good hands. READ MORE: ‘No, I Don’t Believe You, and It Isn’t My Fault — It’s Yours’ We’ve Always Had To Contend With These People The post America Thrives at the Interstate Exit appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Government overspending, an activity the Biden administration has taken to a new level, has sent the country into an inflationary spiral. Through trillions of dollars in COVID-19 relief programs, infrastructure spending, vote-buying student loan forgiveness programs, and a political “Build Back Better Agenda,” the White House has flooded the economy and decimated consumers’ purchasing power. We’re paying more and getting less for everything from energy to food. According to the House Budget Committee, the average family of four is paying around $1,143 more each month than it was in early 2021 for the same goods and services; this includes increased gasoline costs. Rather than reversing course, President Joe Biden is telling voters the private sector is to blame and that he has the answers. He’s doubling down by proposing more stifling, job-killing regulations to “fix” the problem — regulations that will inevitably send inflation to new heights. Energy prices are a core component of inflation. If it costs more to ship goods, prices increase. Yet the president began executing an anti-energy agenda within hours of being sworn in. Although prices were at record lows before he took office, by 2022, consumers were paying 50 percent more for gas — no surprise after canceled energy leases, halted pipeline construction, and new regulatory burdens on energy exploration. Constrain supply, and prices will rise. But that hasn’t stopped Biden from blaming energy companies — the same companies that reduced prices to record lows in relatively freer markets during the Trump administration. He’s now threatening them with tax hikes, which would be passed on and increase consumers’ costs even more. The government’s fiscal irresponsibility has now famously led to inflation and Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, which in turn jeopardize the American Dream of home ownership. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate, which was under 3 percent in late 2020, has skyrocketed to nearly 8 percent. This means the average home purchaser now needs to earn an additional $47,000 per year just to afford a home compared to four years ago. Some economists correctly argue that the “higher cost of money,” which isn’t measured in inflation indexes, explains why people continue to be so upset about inflation despite its statistical decline. Here again, the president shifts blame — this time to his predecessor, falsely claiming the inflation rate was near double digits when he took office. Don’t forget about renters, who, like homebuyers, are no better off now than they were before Biden’s activist regulatory spree took hold. Between March 2020 and July 2023, the national median monthly rent rose from $1,614 to $2,038, marking a 26.26 percent increase. Over the last four years, rental prices have surged by approximately 29.4 percent, with an average annual increase of about 7 percent. Once again, however, the Biden administration found a convenient and private-sector scapegoat. It has unleashed the power of the Department of Justice on RealPage, a U.S. software provider that helps landlords determine market pricing for their rental properties. The existence of a company like this shouldn’t be controversial. Almost every industry today uses a similar tool, from grocery stores to airlines, to make better decisions about pricing their inventory based on supply and demand. But the administration needs someone to blame, and there are not many other viable targets for it to shoot at. It’s nothing new to see politicians blaming others for the error of their ways. Long gone are the days of President Harry S. Truman’s “The buck stops here” philosophy. Our current president would be more successful if he reversed course, ending the spending orgy that’s undermining the American family and restoring a sense of fiscal responsibility to the nation’s budget. We are witnessing the success of doing just this in Argentina, a nation which has long struggled with inflation, excessive government spending, and eroding economic stability and prosperity for its people. Newly elected President Javier Milei has imposed fiscal restraint upon the government, shutting down agencies and programs that were once considered sacrosanct. As a result, inflation is down, income is up, and the nation is quickly becoming a shining light of economic prosperity after decades of darkness and decadence. Its economy is growing for the first time in decades. Some of Milei’s platform — focused on reducing the size of government, cutting unnecessary expenditures, and implementing free-market policies — offers a promising path toward economic revitalization. Perhaps now is the time for the United States to follow its lead. Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Biden Points the Bill (and the Blame) Elsewhere appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I have found that most conservatives, especially older conservatives, don’t think tech news is all that riveting. And I understand. But tech is advancing whether conservatives like it or not, and we should probably talk about it. Besides, this week, software engineers embraced drama in a way most of us didn’t know they were capable of. So, at the very least, we’ll have an entertaining discussion that doesn’t involve advanced computer programming terminology. Tensions bubbled to the surface following Apple’s annual tech conference, WWDC24. Until now, Apple has resisted the gravitational pull of artificial intelligence (something I’ve been grateful for as an Apple user). But that’s all coming to an end. Apple announced that it’s partnering with OpenAI to inject “Apple Intelligence” into every element of its devices. That’s a mix-up if there ever was one in the tech industry. Microsoft (an Apple rival) initially invested billions in OpenAI and has had a long-standing partnership with the company. It’s not entirely clear what the announcement means for Microsoft. Is this a one-up? Or is it a sign that Microsoft and Apple could find a middle ground and collaborate? Either way, it’s a blow to Google, which has historically paid Apple billions of dollars as its default search engine. Google and Microsoft don’t seem particularly irate about the announcement. Elon Musk certainly was. In a string of tweets, Musk informed the world, “If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies.” And that ban wouldn’t just apply to employees either. “Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage,” he said. That might seem a little extreme (and perhaps petty), but Musk’s concern is data privacy. We know very little about what data companies like OpenAI have access to or how they use it. If Apple integrates ChatGPT into Apple products, that will likely give OpenAI access to significant personal information, including phone numbers, contacts, addresses, and even driver’s licenses or banking information. It’s not inconceivable that a model could leak this kind of information. Apple likes to market itself as being a champion of data privacy. It boasts that private information is stored locally on a device, meaning its own software engineers can’t get to your data. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than how Google and Bill Gates’ Microsoft tend to approach their customers’ data. But wait. Isn’t OpenAI closely associated with Microsoft? Yup. And it should come as no surprise that the company has faced criticism over data privacy (for example, it violates the EU’s much more stringent rules). Elon Musk’s accusations aren’t unfounded. The story doesn’t end with Musk’s petulant tweets threatening to boycott Apple products. On Tuesday, Musk withdrew a lawsuit leveled at OpenAI that was sitting in a San Francisco court on the day before that court was supposed to consider dismissing it anyway. The lawsuit alleged that OpenAI (which Musk helped found in 2015) had breached its founding contract, which requires it to pursue AI “for the good of humanity.” Musk claimed that the company was making decisions based on profit. It would have been entertaining to see a court wrestle with holding OpenAI accountable to vague statements like “the good of humanity.” ***** This is a debate over how artificial intelligence will impact our privacy. AI will be integrated into every tech system we use — our computers, phones, cars, etc. That’s inevitable. But what isn’t inevitable is that these tech companies will prioritize keeping our data (names, emails, phone numbers, contacts, locations, and search history) private. In a hyper-politicized and polarized world, that matters. This article is an excerpt from The American Spectator’s Spectator P.M. newsletter. Subscribe today to read future letters from our staff! The post Elon Musk and OpenAI Are at War. Your Data Is at Stake. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from RoadtoRoota: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

from SGT Report: Dr. Robert Young and Tom Ballantyne the co-author of his TRUTH VS. DECEPTION book series is here to expose the systemic global plan to gut humanity via mRNA bioweapons masquerading as “vaccines”. The Covid-19 bioweapon was just the tip of the iceberg if humanity complies with what’s coming. The good news is, […]

by Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone: Everything about Israel is fake. It’s a completely synthetic nation created without any regard for the organic sociopolitical movements of the land and its people, slapped rootless atop an ancient pre-existing civilization with deep roots. That’s why it cannot exist without being artificially propped up by nonstop propaganda, lobbying, online […]