Weekly Writers Round-Up: E-Cig Regulations, Imprisonment over Debt, and the War in Syria
Each week, we’ll be featuring the work of the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. For more information on the program, see here.
The FDA’s assault on vaping is a gift to Big Tobacco by Guy Bentley (Spring 2017) in The Washington Examiner
Tobacco stocks surged Wednesday on news the Food and Drug Administration could ban all e-cigarette flavors, and bring forward product application deadlines set to bankrupt most of the industry. Following months of intense but mostly anecdotal reports of vaping sweeping high schools, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has given America’s top five e-cigarette manufacturers 60 days to come up with plans to tackle the alleged scourge of teen vaping. If these plans prove unsatisfactory, the FDA could remove all flavored e-cigarettes from the market and bring forward the deadline for costly product applications currently set for 2022…
Private Creditors Can Put You in Jail by Michael Shindler (Spring 2016) in The American Conservative
The United States is a nation rife with indebtedness: student loans, credit card balances, unpaid medical bills, and hefty mortgages are all familiar features of American life. During certain points in history, people faced the prospect of incarceration when they could not honor their private debts. In America, the Supreme Court judged this grim practice unconstitutional in 1983—yet even today, many Americans are threatened with jail time or even sent to prison at the behest of creditors hungry for payment…
Assad Has Won and America Must Go: What does Washington think it can accomplish in Syria? by Gil Barndollar (Summer 2018) in The National Interest
Syrian government forces and their allies stand ready to roll into the province of Idlib and extinguish the last major rebel stronghold in the country. Russian air attacks pummeled Idlib in early September. Today’s announcement of a Russo-Turkish agreement for a buffer zone in Idlib appears to have postponed a full-scale attack on the province, but it is likely to be only a temporary reprieve. The Syrian civil war is in its endgame…
Up To 60 Percent Of College Students Need Remedial Classes. This Needs To Change Now by Brad Polumbo (Summer 2018) in The Federalist
This September, millions of college students move to campus for their first semester. Many will begin courses in engineering, calculus, science, or another advanced field, but other incoming freshmen will be stuck in remedial classes, reviewing material they should have learned in the ninth or tenth grade…