Free Republic

PER WEBSITE: FDA regulations will force manufacturers to spend upwards of six-figures just to get new a blend approved. Your favorite boutique cigar brands will wither and die, leaving only the largest manufacturers to introduce a new blend or two per year. Don't expect to sample those new blends, either: free samples will be illegal, as well as cigar events. And even if you're brave enough to buy a box sight unseen, the FDA is likely to mandate near-zero levels of nicotine. How do you suppose THAT cigar will taste? Surely the Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves! When...

Just got an email from Famous that is essentially reproduced at the link. Basically they say the FDA is looking to get into the business of "regulating" cigars and legislation is needed to prevent this. I followed their link to a CRA (Cigar Rights of America) site which allows one to craft messages to be sent to your Senators and Congressman. I just did this. If you agree with me that the FDA shouldn't be regulating cigars I urge you to do the same. ML/NJ

Hundreds of thousands of asthma sufferers who use an over-the-counter inhaler will be compelled to seek a more costly prescription device by the end of the year, when the federal government plans to ban them over environmental concerns. The Food and Drug Administration last week began a media push to get the word out about the looming phase-out. After Dec. 31, the epinephrine asthma inhaler known as Primatene Mist will no longer be available. The product is currently the only FDA-approved over-the-counter inhaler and is being taken off the shelves because it uses something called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as a propellant...

A few weeks ago, I wrote to you about the FDA’s proposed new policy on dietary supplements that could make it impossible or very expensive for you to purchase the natural products you rely on to support your health. The open comment period on the FDA’s proposed guidelines ends on September 30, so NOW is the time to act and let your voice be heard if you want to retain your right to access supplements. (Scroll down to the bottom of this article to learn how you can get involved.) If the FDA has its way, all vitamins, herbs and...

Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns 3:00 PM, Sep 23, 2011 • By MARK HEMINGWAY Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration is would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer: Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere. The...

More than an hour into last night’s debate, Rep. Michele Bachmann attacked Gov. Rick Perry on the HPV vaccination controversy — or more accurately pseudo-controversy. It stems from an executive order issued by Perry in 2007 that required all Texas girls to receive Gardasil, a vaccine against the most common strains of human papilloma virus, before entering the sixth grade. However, Texas lawmakers blocked that mandate. Some critics argued that the vaccine was too new to have been confirmed safe, while others said that Perry’s order would preempt parental rights or give girls a false sense of security, possibly causing...

When the FDA answered FTCLDF (Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund) in the interstate shipment of raw milk suit, they stated four fully repugnant things. That you have no right to, nor does your child have a right to any particular food, you have no right to bodily or physical health, that you have no right to contract, and that they are “rationally” fulfilling their public health mission. It appears that they forgot to include that you have no right to privacy or free association along with no right of contract. With the recent actions against Rawesome, sting operations against...

As Texas governor, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry has presided over 234 executions. It's a record number, which, The Washington Post reported last week, bestows on Perry "a law-and-order credential that none of his competitors can match -- even if they wanted to." Watch how pundits will try to turn that statistic into a political negative -- and paint Perry as the governor with blood on his spurs -- even though American voters overwhelmingly support the death penalty. The temptation to tout Texas' status as the state with the most executions will prove too seductive. It won't matter that, as...

http://rjjrdq.com/2011/07/24/fda-declares-walnuts-a-drug/ This is old news but it is wise to keep informed in what the Obama regime is up to.

FORT WORTH, Texas - If your dog has heartworms it will be harder to get a cure. The only company producing the parasite-killing drug has run out and veterinarians don’t know when they’ll get more. Veterinarians across the country are in a quandary because Immiticide is the only FDA-approved drug available to treat dogs with heartworms. Drug company Merial said its supply is gone and it can’t produce any more because it can’t get the drug’s active ingredient in the United States. The FDA has been hesitant to allow overseas suppliers to fill American orders. Vets are working with what...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Four of the five largest U.S. tobacco companies sued the federal government Tuesday over new graphic cigarette labels that include the sewn-up corpse of a smoker and a picture of diseased lungs, saying the warnings violate their free speech rights and will cost millions of dollars to print. The companies, led by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Lorillard Tobacco Co., said the warnings no longer simply convey facts to allow people to make a decision whether to smoke. They instead force them to put government anti-smoking advocacy more prominently on their packs than their own brands, the...

Sen. Orrin Hatch blasted a new bill that health experts are calling a government takeover of the vitamin industry. New legislation proposed by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., earlier this month would crack down on the testing, labeling, and sale of dietary supplements nationwide. The increased regulation almost certainly will deny many Americans easy, affordable access to the natural health products they rely on daily, experts warn. Sens. Durbin and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., quietly submitted the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act of 2011 over the July 4th weekend. Despite its innocuous title, the bill would force a massive reclassification of food additives...

Well that didn’t take long. Yesterday, in a post discussing a New York Times op-ed that called for heavy taxation on “unhealthy” foods, I asked, “How long before some starry-eyed but angry-faced Democrat proposes legislation to force ‘healthy food’ advertising?” Now The Daily Caller reports that food producers could face government regulations requiring “healthy” composition profiles for foods marketed to children two to seventeen years old.If enacted, new regulatory criteria will reclassify many foods which the FDA presently considers healthy as off limits for advertising to children. In the present formulations, eighty-eight of the top 100 most-consumed foods will be...

Life Extension® has published 57 articles that describe the health benefits of walnuts. Some of this same scientific data was featured on the website of Diamond Foods, Inc., a distributor of packaged walnuts. Last year the FDA determined that walnuts sold by Diamond Foods cannot be legally marketed because the walnuts “are not generally recognized as safe and effective” for the medical conditions referenced on Diamond Foods’s website. According to the FDA, these walnuts were classified as “drugs” and the “unauthorized health claims” cause them to become “misbranded,” thus subjecting them to government “seizure or injunction.” Diamond Foods capitulated and...

Seen any walnuts in your medicine cabinet lately? According to the Food and Drug Administration, that is precisely where you should find them. Because Diamond Foods made truthful claims about the health benefits of consuming walnuts that the FDA didn’t approve, it sent the company a letter declaring, “Your walnut products are drugs” — and “new drugs” at that — and, therefore, “they may not legally be marketed … in the United States without an approved new drug application.” The agency even threatened Diamond with “seizure” if it failed to comply. Diamond’s transgression was to make “financial investments to educate...

New FDA Report: Abortion Drug Kills 14 Women, Injures 2,200 Washington, DC -- The Food and Drug Administration has quietly released a new report about the deaths of and injuries to women from the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug and the Obama administration has done nothing to make the information available to women. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/07/12/new-fda-report-abortion-drug-kills-14-women-injures-2200/

A Food and Drug Administration panel today voted 6-0 to halt the use of cancer drug Avastin for the treatment of breast cancer, saying studies have failed to show Avastin is effective for that purpose. The recommendation came after two days of testimony from patients, doctors, and advocacy groups. The panel faced several tearful accounts of women, young and old, who believed Avastin saved their lives.

WASHINGTON, DC, June 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - If homosexual activists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have their way, a radical “gay sensitivity” training program developed by the department could soon be coming to every federal agency, the Washington Times reported Sunday. According to an internal newsletter published for employees, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the agency that oversees federal employment issues, has met with officials at USDA responsible for developing the program. The newsletter, which calls the program “groundbreaking,” reports that the goal of collaboration with OPM is to spread USDA’s “LGBT Special Emphasis Program”  across the...

Tony the Tiger, some NASCAR drivers and cookie-selling Girl Scouts will be out of a job unless grocery manufacturers agree to reinvent a vast array of their products to satisfy the Obama administration’s food police. Either retool the recipes to contain certain levels of sugar, sodium and fats, or no more advertising and marketing to tots and teenagers, say several federal regulatory agencies. The same goes for restaurants. It’s not just the usual suspected foods that are being targeted, such a thin mint cookies sold by scouts or M&Ms and Snickers, which sponsor cars in the Sprint Cup, but pretty...

AUSTIN, TX - The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is expected to issue its new proposed rule for mandatory animal traceability very shortly. While USDA already has traceability requirements as part of existing animal disease control programs, the proposed framework goes much further to require animal tagging and tracing even absent any active disease threat. The framework has raised significant concerns among family farm and ranch advocates, who criticize the agency for failing to provide a coherent, factual explanation for the new program’s necessity. “USDA brags about the success of past programs, but has abandoned the principles that made them...