Deregulate!

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Poorer, less educated Americans have given up smoking much more slowly than the upper and middle classes, a report from the Washington Post found. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that while college-educated Americans reduced their smoking rate by 83 percent between 1966 and 2015, those without a high school diploma cut back by just 39 percent.

It’s not due to lack of willpower: Tobacco companies have targeted their marketing toward impoverished communities in recent years and lobbied against cigarette taxes in poor, rural states where smoking rates are highest.

When Wealthy People Quit Smoking, Tobacco Companies Went After the Poor – Mother Jones

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Twenty-five years ago, U.S. tech companies pledged to stop using chemicals that caused miscarriages and birth defects. They failed to ensure that their Asian suppliers did the same.

American Chipmakers Had a Toxic Problem. So They Outsourced It - Bloomberg

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Given the backtracking of food and food labeling initiatives taken under Obama, one should consider the following:

Since 1980, the obesity prevalence has doubled in more than 70 countries around the world — mainly in low- and middle-income regions — and it has steadily increased in nearly every other country. The study is the largest systematic analysis of obesity data ever done, with researchers combing the medical literature and crunching thousands of data sets on obesity in adults and children covering 195 countries. Here are their 5 most important takeaways. A lack of exercise and too many calories have been depicted as equal causes of the obesity crisis. But they shouldn’t be, the NEJM authors said. According to their paper, physical activity levels began to decline before the global obesity rate started to surge — which means changes to the food environment are the prime obesity culprit.

Food companies like PepsiCo and McDonalds have made inroads all over the world with their cheap, calorie-dense and nutrient poor soda, candy, and fast food. They’ve also heavily marketed their products — which are swiftly becoming cheaper and more accessible than healthier alternatives, like fruits and vegetables, particularly in cities. "Increased availability, accessibility, and affordability of energy-dense foods, along with intense marketing of such foods, could explain excess energy intake and weight gain among different populations,” the researchers wrote. We are also simply eating more calories per person: Portion sizes have gone up, and eating outside of the home often means heavier, unhealthier foods, and sugary drinks to wash them down. Yet, we often focus on the need for more exercise as the way to shrink our waistlines, and the study suggests that focus is misguided.

Having a high body weight is now considered a risk factor for a range of chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, and a number of cancers. And as obesity has become more common, so has the toll for these health problems. Altogether, the researchers estimated that a high body weight contributed to 4 million deaths globally — or 7 percent of the deaths from any cause — in 2015. Most of those deaths were caused by cardiovascular disease, with diabetes following closely behind, along with kidney disease and cancers. This is a massive number: It’s more than the deaths caused by traffic accidents, Alzheimer’s, or other deadly issues that get a lot of airtime, like terrorism, combined.

Obesity now kills more people worldwide than car crashes, terror attacks, and Alzheimer's combined - Vox

And how about this for the roll-back of Mrs. Obama's healthy school meal initiative:

While obesity is still rarer among children compared to adults, the rate of childhood obesity has surged much faster in many countries. Of the 20 largest countries in the world, the US had the worst rate of childhood obesity, with 13 percent of children now obese. Egypt had the highest adult obesity prevalence, where 35 percent of adults are now obese. This news comes along with a growing body of evidence that being overweight or obese in youth can hurt your heart health and increase your risk of death. We also know that when people are obese as children, it can cut into life expectancy in a serious way.

“Even if we were to dramatically step up prevention efforts tomorrow,” said Andrew Stokes, assistant professor of global health at Boston University’s School of Public Health, “there is a generation of children, over 100 million globally, that will likely have to grapple their entire lives with weight-related diseases, such as diabetes and heart diseases and also face higher rates of premature mortality.”

Obesity now kills more people worldwide than car crashes, terror attacks, and Alzheimer's combined - Vox

Trump isn't helping, quite the contrary. And it's poorer Americans who disproportionally suffer from obesity:

So far, the new administration has been pushing back key federal policies that were aimed at curbing obesity. They’ve delayed the compliance deadline for calorie labels on restaurant menus, relaxed nutrition standards for federally subsidized school lunch programs, and pushed back implementation of newer and more informative Nutrition Facts labels, which were scheduled to appear on millions of food packages by July 2018.

Obesity now kills more people worldwide than car crashes, terror attacks, and Alzheimer's combined - Vox

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It is quite remarkable, when you think about it, that the very phrase “health and safety” has become a joke, since health and safety are usually considered rather desirable. The idea has become an unreal bogeyman in just the way that red tape and also political correctness have.

In each case a few plausibly absurd examples (whether true, exaggerated or just made up) are dishonestly presented as representative of the vast majority. The locus classicus in the case of EU regulation is, of course, the banned bendy banana and other falsehoods promulgated in his early career of imaginative journalism by the present foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.

He and other fantasists have also claimed, for example, that we are now “forced” to use lower-powered vacuum cleaners owing to a 2014 ruling on energy efficiency. In fact the industry backed the new rules and the UK government supported them. But the anti-red tape fanatic is nothing if not a slick post-truth operative. The point is to create a general atmosphere in which any and all regulation seems absurd.

‘Deadlier than terrorism’ – the right’s fatal obsession with red tape | Politics | The Guardian

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This doesn't need regulation either..

Some victims of the U.S.’s opioid epidemic are being taken advantage of by corrupt treatment centers in Florida, according to a report from NBC News' 'Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly.' Corrupt treatment centers have reportedly partnered with “body brokers” and “sober homes” to search for patients with good health insurance.

After treatment centers have attracted patients, they charge their insurance tens of thousands of dollars for unnecessary drug screenings and questionable therapy. The NBC News report interviewed parents of three patients who died after joining "sober homes." The Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, and the Mental Health Parity Act require insurers to cover treatment for substance abuse, however the fraudulent actors have taken advantage of the laws due to a lack of oversight..

Fraud in Florida’s drug treatment industry: report | TheHill

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Neither does this need regulation..

You may have caught wind of last week’s news that 20 percent of baby food—and 14 percent of  other food—contains lead. The finding came from a report by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a nonprofit advocacy group. Here’s what you should know... Experts agree there’s no safe level of lead in food, especially for children. The heavy metal’s presence in blood has been linked to lower IQ, behavioral problems, and learning disabilities. The federal government banned the use of lead-based paint in toys, furniture, and residential properties back in 1978, but lead exposure has come under increased scrutiny since last year’s water crisis in Flint, Michigan. In June 2016, in the wake of that crisis, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a report advising that all sources of lead exposure be eliminated—including lead-containing food and water..

1 in 5 Baby Food Samples Have Lead. Here’s What You Need to Know. – Mother Jones

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The Trump administration took a major step on Tuesday towards repealing a law designed to limit pollution in the nation’s waters. The Waters of the United States, or Wotus bill had extended federal protection afforded to larger bodies of water to rivers and wetlands that flow into them. However the bill faced opposition from farmers and developers who argued it was an infringement of their property rights, and several states sued the government.

Forget Trump Tweets and Travel Ban, Here's Five Major Moves the Administration Made When You Were Looking Elsewhere

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Of course, this is just another example of job sapping regulation, right?

Trans fat must now be disclosed on all nutrition labels, and certain cities, counties, and states have even gone as far as banning the use of partially hydrogenated oils in restaurants. By 2018, the FDA will no longer allow the food industry to use these kinds of oil. These restrictions are making a difference. One study, which looked at counties with and without a ban on trans fat used in food service establishments, found that the incidence of heart attacks declined by 7.8% over three years in the counties with the ban.

What are trans fats? - Business Insider

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The stories coming out of the official drug pushers are quite terrifying..

Key employees at Insys Therapeutics, the maker of powerful opioid Subsys, pled guilty to violating anti-kickback laws Tuesday and Wednesday.  It's part of an ongoing investigation that illustrates how Insys became the poster child for the evils of the opioid crisis and how some companies stopped at nothing to addict America. Levine admitted to paying off medical practitioners in order to get them to prescribe Subsys under the guise of a legal speakers program. The program, however, was a total scam.

From the Justice Department: The Speaker Programs, which were typically held at high-end restaurants, were ostensibly designed to gather licensed healthcare professionals who had the capacity to prescribe Subsys and educate them about the drug. In truth, the events were usually just a gathering of friends and co-workers, most of whom did not have the ability to prescribe Subsys, and no educational component took place. “Speakers” were paid a fee that ranged from $1,000 to several thousand dollars for attending these dinners. At times, the sign-in sheets for the Speaker Programs were forged so as to make it appear that the programs had an appropriate audience of healthcare professionals.

Opioid addiction drugmaker Insys sees arrests and Justice Department action - Business Insider

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And here are some more drug dealers with abusive practices:

British American Tobacco (BAT) and other multinational tobacco firms have threatened governments in at least eight countries in Africa demanding they axe or dilute the kind of protections that have saved millions of lives in the west, a Guardian investigation has found.

BAT, one of the world’s leading cigarette manufacturers, is fighting through the courts to try to block the Kenyan and Ugandan governments’ attempts to bring in regulations to limit the harm caused by smoking. The giant tobacco firms hope to boost their markets in Africa, which has a fast-growing young and increasingly prosperous population.

In one undisclosed court document in Kenya, seen by the Guardian, BAT’s lawyers demand the country’s high court “quash in its entirety” a package of anti-smoking regulations and rails against what it calls a “capricious” tax plan. The case is now before the supreme court after BAT Kenya lost in the high court and the appeal court. A ruling is expected as early as next month.

BAT in Uganda asserts in another document that the government’s Tobacco Control Act is “inconsistent with and in contravention of the constitution”.

Experts say Africa and southern Asia are urgent new battlegrounds in the global fight against smoking because of demographics and rising prosperity. Despite declining smoking and more controls in some richer countries, it still kills more than seven million people globally every year, according to the WHO, and there are fears the tactics of big tobacco will effectively succeed in “exporting the death and harm” to poorer nations.

Threats, bullying, lawsuits: tobacco industry's dirty war for the African market | World news | The Guardian

It kills more than seven million people a year, vastly more deadly than terrorism..