Adam Dick

Jacob Sullum wrote Monday at Reason regarding the United States government’s spin on survey results regarding smoking and vaping by teenagers. Sullum relates that, while the results of the US government’s yearly National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) indicates that from 2011 to 2016 teenagers significantly substituted less-dangerous-to-health vaping for traditional cigarette smoking, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests in the June 16 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that the substitution is of no health benefit.

This spin on the data is in line with the CDC’s promoting of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, including of e–cigarettes, in the final paragraph of the CDC report. These regulations, Sullum writes, “threaten to cripple an industry that could help millions of smokers prolong their lives by switching to a far less hazardous source of nicotine.”

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Last month, United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a letter to congressional leaders urging them to oppose Congress again including in Department of Justice appropriations legislation a provision intended to stop, through a restriction on the use of appropriated money, the US government from arresting and prosecuting people for actions that comply with state medical marijuana laws, even if those actions violate US drug laws. Some people are reacting to Sessions’ letter, which was revealed this week, with condemnation of Sessions and the Trump administration for departing from Obama administration policy that showed increased leniency in regard to marijuana. But this claim appears to misrepresent the Obama administration’s marijuana history.

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A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Saturday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.

Listen to the new episode here:

Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.

Starting in five four three two one.

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Here is a quote from a May 26 speech: “Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services, have pointed out the connections between wars that we have been involved in or supported or fought in other countries, such as Libya, and terrorism here at home.”

Who said this? You might guess Ron Paul. It does sound very much like the sort of explanation of blowback that Paul frequently offers in relation to United States foreign interventions. But, the quote is not from Paul. The quote is from a speech by Jeremy Corbyn four days after the killing of over 20 people at a concert in Manchester, England attended largely by teenage and younger individuals.

Corbyn is the leader of the British Labour Party. Over the past few weeks, his party has continued to reduce the lead of the ruling Conservative Party in polling for Britain’s June 8 general election. Whether or not Corbyn’s party wins the most seats in the House of Commons, Corbyn is showing, as Paul has in America, that, contrary to the fretting of many pundits, being upfront about blowback and opposing wars is not a political liability.

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Ron Paul holds the top place in a Newsmax list of the 100 most influential libertarians released Thursday. “Perhaps no one has done more to bring the libertarian platform into the national spotlight than Ron Paul,” begins the description of Paul in the list.

Since his last presidential campaign and retirement from the United States House of Representatives several years ago, Paul has kept busy communicating his ideas and commenting on the news. Paul has done so via means including his weekly column and his 2015 book Swords into Plowshares, as well as by hosting the Ron Paul Liberty Report each weekday and serving as chairman of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity (RPI).

Talking about RPI, several members of the RPI Advisory and Academic Boards — Water Block, Robert Higgs, Thomas Massie, Andrew Napolitano, and Lew Rockwell — are keeping Paul company on the most influential libertarians list.

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.