Tag: Law

Court’s ruling overturns state government copout on responsible drugs regulation

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Mark Lennihan/AP

The Oklahoma supreme court on Tuesday overturned a $465m opioid ruling against drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, finding that a lower court wrongly interpreted the state’s public nuisance law in the first case of its kind in the US to go to trial.

The ruling was the second blow this month to a government case that tried to hold drugmakers responsible for the national epidemic of opioid abuse. Public nuisance claims are at the heart of some 3,000 lawsuits brought by state and local governments against drugmakers, distribution companies and pharmacies.

“The court has allowed public nuisance claims to address discrete, localized problems, not policy problems,” said the opinion written by Justice James R Winchester.

“J&J had no control of its products through the multiple levels of distribution, including after it sold the opioids to distributors and wholesalers, which were then disbursed to pharmacies, hospitals, and physicians’ offices, and then prescribed by doctors to patients.”

The ruling also said the company had no control over how patients used the products…

Policy is regulation. Regulation is the responsibility of government – as is enforcement of those regulations. I won’t wander off into analogies though there are many at hand. The basic premise remains the same. Illegal behavior because of substance abuse, whether that substance be alcohol, addictive or non-addictive drugs, is the purview of law. That remit is the responsibility of legislative bodies in conjunction with government enforcement of regulations. Hopefully, the process is conducted sensibly and carried out, honestly.

Happy Birthday, Rosa Parks…

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She would have been 108, today.

On Dec. 1, 1955, after working as an assistant tailor at a Montgomery, Ala., department store, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks got on the Cleveland Avenue bus, sat down and was told to give up her seat for a white man who was standing. Parks calmly refused. When the driver threatened to have her arrested she replied, “you may do that.” The police were called and Parks was arrested for violating Montgomery’s racial segregation laws.

The “quality of life” in the America when I grew up. Racism and bigotry was perfectly acceptable in much of our politics…as they still are in much of our society.

Contemptible.

Not about Zuck…says Om

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Barefoot Communications

Yesterday must have been a tough day at work in the Facebook offices. First, Apple fired off a broadside on Facebook around issues of privacy. Then, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 Attorneys General teamed up to start antitrust proceedings against the company. They want to break up Facebook into residual parts.

There are much smarter people than me who can and will weigh in on the Facebook matter. But I will observe that this is going to be a long-drawn-out proceeding. Remember the United States v. Microsoft Corp.? That took forever — and the outcomes were nothing compared to the impact of the open-source movement and the rise of the open web…

I am not a lawyer or an antitrust expert, but as someone who has observed the technology industry for a long time, it seems important to note that things in the industry are speeding up. The government watchdogs need to be mindful that the time it takes from being an upstart to a giant is getting shorter and shorter.

Google was roughly 21 years. Facebook was 15 years. In 11 years, Uber became a $95 billion (in market capitalization) company. It took newly-public DoorDash just seven years from being four guys at Stanford University to become a $68 billion company with over fifty percent of the food delivery market. And the future is going to be even faster because the network effects make everything grow much faster…

What we need — and soon — is a new framework that thinks about monopolies from a more future-oriented perspective. Market share is such an industrial metric to think about in this digital age.

Om popped my poor brain with the last sentence in that paragraph. True, I had been in the chairs of two dentists for three-and-a-half hours. One of them readying me for implant surgery, next week. But, no anesthetics needed, yet. So, I was in fair shape to reflect upon the industrial past, which had ruled most of my working life – and the digital present and future, the context of my present life as well as the past couple decades of dialectical explosion.

That concussion was barely noticed by the political hacks promulgating 99% of the lawmaking that attempts to guide future America. Not very well, at all, I’m afraid.

RTFA, let it roil your little gray cells.

Georgia politicians shut down abortion rights. Netflix will answer by shutting down production.

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Click to enlarge — Joeff Davis

❝ Netflix has become the first major Hollywood company to take a stand against Georgia’s recent passage of a strict abortion law, with chief content officer Ted Sarandos saying Tuesday that the streaming giant would “rethink our entire investment in Georgia” if legislation known as the “heartbeat bill” became state law…

“We have many women working on productions in Georgia, whose rights, along with millions of others, will be severely restricted by this law,” Sarandos said in a statement. “It’s why we will work with the ACLU and others to fight it in court. Given the legislation has not yet been implemented, we’ll continue to film there — while also supporting partners and artists who choose not to. Should it ever come into effect, we’d rethink our entire investment in Georgia…”

❝ The bill’s passage earlier this month comes as Georgia has become a vital production hub for the film and TV industries. The region known “Y’allywood” is responsible for more than 92,100 jobs and nearly $4.6 billion in total wages in the state, according to the MPAA. State officials said that for the fiscal year ending June 30 film and TV production generated $2.7 billion in direct spending.

Boycotts are a time-honored tool against racism in the Confederacy and across the United States. The tactic is overdue IMHO against bible-thumping bigots who would impede women’s rights. They deserve the same opportunity to feel the hurt where they care the most. In their wallets.

New Mexico governor signs law expanding checks on gun sales

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Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican

❝ Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation Friday requiring background checks for virtually all firearm sales in New Mexico.

The bill has been a priority for gun control advocates, who argue the measure merely closes a loophole in state law and will help keep weapons out of the hands of people barred from owning firearms…

❝ And as for the argument that the bill limits constitutional rights, the governor countered: “We all have a constitutional right to be safe in our homes and our communities.”

Article by Andrew Oxford, Santa Fe New Mexican. A worthwhile read.

Water War A’Coming – Who Wins, Who Loses?

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Education Images/UIG

❝ Lake Mead is the country’s biggest reservoir of water. Think of it as the savings account for the entire Southwest. Right now, that savings account is nearly overdrawn.

For generations, we’ve been using too much of the Colorado River, the 300-foot-wide ribbon of water that carved the Grand Canyon, supplies Lake Mead, and serves as the main water source for much of the American West.

The river sustains one in eight Americans — about 40 million people — and millions of acres of farmland…snowpack in the Rockies has been dwindling, and there’s no physical way for them to store the water they depend on. There are no big reservoirs in the Rockies…

❝ And then there’s always climate change. On the world’s current emissions trajectory, sharply warming temperatures boost the odds of a megadrought in the Southwest sometime later this century to more than 99 percent. Such a drought would last a generation. Nearly all trees in the Southwest could die. The scale of the disaster would have the power to reshape the course of U.S. history.

❝ For now, the spat over the Colorado River offers a glimpse into water politics in an era of permanent scarcity.

Our little community in La Cieneguilla is well situated to survive a water war. Geology is on our side. So what? We have neighbors in the county, in the state, who will move to logical and kindly, illegal and greedy, solutions depending upon timely local politics.

Gird your loins wherever you may be in [or near] the Southwest. Hopefully, common sense and decency prevail.

Germany prepares to fine Facebook €500,000 for every fake or hate-filled post

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❝ Germany has lost patience with Facebook.

After years of asking, cajoling and threatening the US social network to work faster to tackle fake news and hate speech, Berlin has announced a new law hitting Facebook with a €500,000 fine for every problematic post that doesn’t vanish within 24 hours.

❝ A day after Facebook announced new procedures to tackle fake news, Berlin made clear it is no longer interested in self-regulation…

…New legislation in the new year…will oblige all dominant internet platforms operating in Germany to have a legal contact, operating round-the-clock, for victims of hate speech and fake news. At present, German Facebook users complain that complaints are forwarded to its international headquarters in Dublin – with an unclear response and action time.

“If, after checking, Facebook doesn’t delete the post in question within 24 hours, it can reckon with severe fines of up to €500,000,” said Thomas Oppermann, Bundestag floor leader of Germany’s ruling SPD. In addition, he said, the person affected will be able to demand a “correction with the same reach” as the original post…

Keep an eye on this one. While there’s little chance of the GOUSA ever making hate speech illegal, laws affecting a portion of Facebook’s income stream as large as Germany and thenceforth the EU – laws applied in that marketplace may set standards for the larger communications entity.

In the not-too-distant future, we won’t need sex to reproduce — Get ready!

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I’ll give you the beginning of this article – and the end. You really need to read the whole critter to justify pondering the concept.

❝ For 100 million years, all our ancestors reproduced basically the same way. A male reproductive organ deposited sperm into a female reproduction organ, where it could fertilize eggs — leading to baby ancestral tetrapods, mammals, primates, and eventually humans. The past 60 years have seen this begin to change, first with clinically available artificial insemination and then with in vitro fertilization (IVF)…

❝ In the United States today, these two techniques lead to about 100,000 births each year, roughly 2.5 percent of the 4 million children born annually. Within the next few decades, that percentage will skyrocket. Developments in bioscience, galloping forward in most cases for reasons having nothing to with reproduction, will combine to make IVF cheaper and much easier.

These new techniques will allow safe and easy embryo selection – but they will also open doors to genetically edited babies, “their own” genetic babies for same-sex couples, babies with a single genetic parent, and maybe babies from artificial wombs.

❝ Starting in the next few decades, these new methods of reproduction will give people new choices. They will also raise a host of vexing legal and ethical questions, questions we need to start discussing.

Deal with genetic selection of embryos, designer babies, create 100 embryos to choose the best and scrap or recycle the rest, unibabies from a uniparent [not a clone]…you get the idea.

Henry Greely is a professor of law and of genetics. He concludes…

❝ We need to start thinking about these questions. The future is coming. It may not be exactly the future I foresee, but, like it or not, it will certainly feature far more choices, for families and for societies, about making babies.

You now know more about that future than 99.9 percent of humanity. Learn more, pay attention to the relevant news, and talk with your family and friends. The more we consider, debate, and plan for plausible futures, the more likely we are not to create any kind of perfect future, but, at least, to avoid some catastrophes. And that is not a bad goal.

Utah law lets authorities take down drones at wildfires

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Click to enlarge

❝ Utah’s governor has signed into law a measure that makes the state the first to let authorities jam drone signals and crash the devices specifically for flying too close to wildfires.

❝ Republican Gov. Gary Herbert’s office announced Monday that he signed the law over the weekend, just days after lawmakers met in a special session to pass it and a handful of other bills.

State Sen. Evan Vickers, who co-sponsored the law, says it technically allows firefighters and law enforcement to shoot down drones, but they probably won’t do that because it’s too difficult. Instead, authorities are expected to use technology that jams signals and crashes drones.

❝ Utah passed the law after a drone recently was sighted five times over one wildfire, causing firefighters to ground their aircraft and slow their work.

But, but, but…some idjit was seriously getting some dynamite images and video for his YouTube account. Might’ve gone viral and got him a real job.