More insanity...
I was looking for information on Robert Califf, M.D., the Commissioner of the FDA. Among other groups, he is a member of the Institute of Medicine. In March 2015, the IOM issued a report on the
Public Health Implications of Raising the Minimum Age of Legal Access to Tobacco Products.
The report goes into detail about the effects of tobacco on developing brains - yada, yada (in fact, some of the report was copied word-for-word into the Deeming Final Rule).
However, buried in the report it states, "In addition, the rapidly changing landscape of tobacco products—for example, e-cigarettes— provides unknowns and could affect the future of tobacco product use in ways that the committee was unable to anticipate due to lack of evidence."
It doesn't seem to me that a "lack of evidence" equals a negative. That's like saying
there was a lack of evidence John committed the murder, but we are going to incarcerate him anyway since he might commit murder at some point.
The report concludes with the opinion that "MLA will reduce tobacco use initiation, particularly among adolescents 15 to 17 years of age; improve the health of Americans across the lifespan; and save lives."
But the conclusion also states, "The public health impact of raising the MLA for tobacco products depends on the degree to which
local and state governments change their policies. These decisions will depend on each
state’s or locality’s balance between personal interests and the privacy of young adults to make their own choices versus society’s legitimate concerns about protecting public health."
http://www.nationalacademies.org/hm...coMinAge/tobacco_minimum_age_report_brief.pdf
