Cato Daily Dispatch for June 16, 2004
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AARP Backs Drug Reimportation BillFTC Rejects Do-Not-Spam List
Climatologists Say Global Warming Will Impact Poor
AARP Backs Drug Reimportation Bill
"The influential AARP senior citizens group said late Tuesday it will hold a press conference today to endorse a bipartisan Senate bill that would allow Americans to import cheaper drugs from Canada and other foreign countries," Reuters reports.
"The bill, whose bipartisan Senate sponsors include Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, and Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, would allow Americans to bring in cheaper drugs from Canada, and would phase in imports from other industrialized countries later."
In "This Is Your Senate On Drugs," Vice President for Legal Affairs Roger Pilon writes: "The Senate bill ensures below-cost reimportation by prohibiting American companies from 'taking actions that would have the effect of thwarting drug importation.' It prohibits companies from raising prices abroad. It prohibits them from reducing supplies abroad. It truly does import foreign price controls. In a word, it goes right past free trade to forced trade -- at prices that make future R&D impossible. We'll have cheap drugs for a while, but no new drugs ever."
FTC Rejects Do-Not-Spam List
"The Federal Trade Commission Tuesday rejected as unworkable a do-not-spam list to stop unwanted e-mail, despite the popularity and success of a similar registry for consumers who don't want telephone sales pitches," the Washington Post reports.
"After studying the issue for months, agency Chairman Timothy J. Muris said a do-not-spam list would be 'a waste of time' because spammers would ignore it."
In "Junk Legislation Can't Solve Junk E-Mail Dilemma," Adjunct Scholar Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., also author of the 2001 study, "Why Canning 'Spam' Is a Bad Idea," argues that "smarter approaches to the spam epidemic include better e-mail filtering, such as setting the owner's screen to delete bulk mail and to receive only from recognized and approved e-mail addresses."
He writes: "Regulating communications isn't something to be done lightly. If a law merely sends the most egregious spammers offshore to continue hammering us, that may simply create legal and regulatory hassles for small businesses trying to make a go of legitimate e-commerce, or for mainstream companies that are not spammers. Commercial e-mail, even if unsolicited, may be welcome if the sender is a business selling legal and legitimate products in a non-abusive manner."
Climatologists Say Global Warming Will Impact Poor
"Ten of the nation's top climate researchers warned yesterday that policymakers must act soon to address the dangers associated with global warming, which they described as a looming threat that will hit hardest and soonest at the world's poor and at farmers," the Washington Post reports.
"'By mid-century, millions more poor children around the world are likely to face displacement, malnourishment, disease and even starvation unless all countries take action now to slow global warming' and sea-level rises that will follow, Michael Oppenheimer, who teaches geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, said at a conference."
Patrick Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies and co-author of "The Satanic Gases," writes in "Drought-Inspired Climate Panic" that statistics show that the Earth is becoming neither hotter nor drier: "U.S. surface temperatures have risen a mere 0.4ºC in the last 100 years. Are we getting drier? The answer is no. U.S. precipitation has increased about 10 percent over the 20th century, an increase of around 3 inches in the last 100 years."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org