Weekly Writers Round-Up: Policy-Making through Lawsuits, Tobacco Prohibition, and Soaring Deficits

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Applications for the summer session are now open!

Bloomberg and Biden’s social solution? Sue by Bailey Griffith (Summer 2019) in the Washington Examiner
In one of the Democratic Party’s recent debates, former Vice President Joe Biden raised the trial lawyers’ rally cry: Sue ’em! Societal woes got you down? Don’t worry — there’s a lawsuit for that! Opioid crisis? Sue. Climate change? Sue. Teen vaping? Sue.

Never mind that there are state and federal agencies appropriately addressing each of these issues. Never mind that opioid deaths are down 4.1% thanks to the Drug Enforcement Agency’s opioid production reduction and the Justice Department’s prosecution of negligent doctors and pharmacists. Never mind that U.S. emissions of key pollutants are decreasing, in some cases as much as 23%. Never mind that adult smokers for the first time have access to a safer alternative to tobacco. Facts just don’t make the same flashy social statement that suing evil industry makes though…

Vaping, smoking restrictions neither necessary, fair by Jacob James Rich (Fall 2018) in The Columbus Dispatch)
Congress is poised to eliminate half of the tobacco industry. After conflating tobacco product flavors with youth vaping, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., is now advancing a ban on all flavored tobacco products, which would be the most extensive prohibition since alcohol in the 1920s.

States like Ohio and Kentucky have flirted with banning e-cigarette flavors, but this bill is coming for the whole industry…

Trump’s deregulations must address the deficit first by Jen Sidorova (Spring 2019) in the Washington Times
The White House Council of Economic Advisers recently released the Economic Report of the President, an annual review of the administration’s view of its successes and outline of its policy agenda for the future. The Trump administration points to economic indicators — from historically-low unemployment to GDP and some wage growth — as signs of its progress in boosting the economy through tax cuts and deregulation. 

However, none of this will work out as planned if the administration fails to address the federal budget deficit…