Cato Daily Dispatch for October 21, 2002
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via email
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via PDA (AvantGo)
(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)
New York Mayor Moves to Ban Smoking in BarsBush Proposes Regulations to Increase Access to Generic Drugs
North Korea Willing to Negotiate Over Nuclear Weapons Program
New York Mayor Moves to Ban Smoking in Bars
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a zealous reformed smoker who already has helped make cigarettes here the most highly taxed in the United States, wants to ban smoking at bars, restaurants, pool halls, bingo parlors and bowling alleys, reports USA Today. The smoking ban would even extend to outdoor cafes and private clubs. About 13,000 establishments in all would be affected.
Smoking has been banned in most restaurants and office buildings in New York since 1995. Bloomberg's proposal would extend the prohibition to the hazy heart of smoking in America: the New York barroom. Anti-smoking advocates say if they can stop it here, they can stop it anywhere.
California and Delaware have statewide bans on smoking in bars and restaurants, and dozens of localities have adopted such bans. But New York would be by far the largest city to pass its own measure. Anti-smoking forces are looking forward to an enormous psychological victory.
In "Bloomberg Smokes Out Property Rights," Robert A. Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies, writes that whether a bar or restaurant permits smoking should be up to an establishment's owner, not the government. "Customers or employees who object may go elsewhere. They would not be relinquishing any right that they ever possessed. By contrast, when a businessman is forced to effect an unwanted smoking policy on his own property, the government violates his rights."
Bush Proposes Regulations to Increase Access to Generic Drugs
The Associated Press reports President Bush today moved to bring generic drugs more quickly to the market by blocking pharmaceutical companies from filing multiple patent-protection lawsuits that can stall the cheaper products for years.
Bush said the administration's aim is to "reduce the costs of prescription drugs in America by billions of dollars and ease the burdens for millions of Americans, especially our seniors," he said.
Brand-name drug manufacturers sometimes file lawsuits against generic drug makers poised to put less expensive products on the shelves. The lawsuits invoke the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act, which was meant to promote competition in the drug industry but which also gives the brand-name makers up to 30 months of additional patent protection while litigation proceeds.
Tom Miller, Cato's director of health policy studies, made the following comments today in response to Bush's action: "The proposed regulation will curb the current handful of abuses of the patent process for prescription drugs, without undermining broader incentives for innovative research. We need to maintain a balance between encouraging lower drug prices through generic competition and ensuring that brand-name manufacturers will continue to create new lifesaving drugs. Instead of focusing too narrowly on opportunistic short-term fixes, we should also reexamine other factors that push drug prices higher -- the burdensome FDA drug-approval process that delays entry of innovative products and limits competition, and the excessive growth of third-party insurance coverage of prescription drugs that desensitizes individual consumers to the full cost of their spending decisions.
North Korea Willing to Negotiate Over Nuclear Weapons Program
North Korea said today that it was willing to negotiate over its nuclear weapons program if the United States withdraws its "hostile policy" toward the communist country, according to the Associated Press.
The comments by Kim Yong Nam, the North's ceremonial head of state, were unlikely to mollify the United States, which has said North Korea's nuclear program is a non-negotiable issue and must be dismantled immediately.
The comments were the North's first official response to a U.S. announcement last week that the communist country had admitted to having a nuclear weapons program in violation of international agreements.
After North Korea admitted last week that it has been conducting a nuclear weapons program, Senior Fellow Doug Bandow made the following comments: "North Korea's admission that it has maintained a nuclear weapons program likely reflects its international isolation and weakness in what for it is an increasingly hostile environment. Its unverified claim to have developed 'more powerful' weapons may be an attempt to deter the Bush administration's announced policy of preemption--an unexpected example of blowback."
"In any case," he argues, "the North poses no threat to America, the world's most powerful nation. With Pyongyang continuing to mix conciliation with belligerence, Washington should step back and let those countries with the most at stake, particularly South Korea and Japan, take the lead in developing policy towards North Korea."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org
/div>