Prevention Matters

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon today ruled that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may not regulate electronic cigarettes as drugs or medical devices.

"This case appears to be yet another example of FDA's aggressive efforts to regulate recreational tobacco products as drugs or devices," Judge Leon said in his ruling. He added the FDA's "tenacious drive to maximize its regulatory power has resulted in its advocacy of an interpretation of the relevant law that I find, at first blush, to be unreasonable and unacceptable."

The FDA has seized shipments of e-cigarettes, saying the electronic cigarettes were essentially drugs or devices that were being imported without FDA approval.

Meanwhile, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has filed suit seeking to halt the sale of one company's electronic cigarettes in the state, saying they contain dangerous chemicals and are being marketed to children.
Brown says Florida-based Smoking Everywhere Inc., a leading manufacturer of e-cigarettes, has no evidence to back up claims their product is safe.

An ordinance to restrict fast-food chain restaurants in South Los Angeles is unlikely to cut obesity, say researchers at Rand Health. In a study published in Health Affairs, the researchers found that the South Los Angeles region has no more fast-food chain establishments on a per capita basis than other parts of the city, but rather many more small food stores and other food outlets. They said these small food stores and outlets are more likely to be the source of high-calorie snacks and soda consumed substantially more often by residents of South Los Angeles as compared to other parts of the city.

A San Francisco program that turns unused roadway areas into parks was named Partnership for Prevention's "Best Prevention Idea of the Week," while federal officials’ delay in informing schools about potentially tainted food was named “Worst Prevention Idea of the Week.”

The Best/Worst Idea awards are a regular feature of Prevention Matters, the blog of Partnership for Prevention. Each week, Partnership for Prevention's staff will choose the designees based on nominations of items in the previous week's news submitted by members, staff and the public at large. To submit a nomination or for more information, contact Damon Thompson at dthompson@prevent.org.


BEST

SF PROGRAM TRANSFORMS PAVEMENT INTO PARKS
http://arieff.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/pavement-to-parks/?emc=eta1

San Francisco’s “Pavement to Parks” program creates green spaces where people can walk and be active by reclaiming excess roadway, through the use of simple and low-cost design interventions. A pro bono designer works on each park (there are 12 scheduled to be finished through 2010; three have just been completed) with the mandate of using materials the city already has to maximize greenery and “transform a sea of asphalt.”

WORST

U.S. DELAYED TELLING SCHOOLS ABOUT FOOD RECALLS
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32989396/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/?ocid=twitter/from/ET

The federal government failed to inform schools of recalls of suspected tainted food products, potentially putting millions of schoolchildren at risk of food poisoning over the last two years, a government investigation has concluded. The recalled foods included salmonella-tainted peanut products linked to the deaths of at least nine people, said the report, which was completed last month by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, recently analyzed the strategy that produced staggering levels of obesity in the United States.

“We put fast food on every corner, we put junk food in schools, we got rid of PE, we put candy and soda at the checkout stand of every retail outlet you can think of,” he said. “The results are in. It worked.”

Orange County, California, officials have reversed themselves and agreed to restore funding to Planned Parenthood for sex education. The county supervisors then adopted new policies to restrict funds for health education programs in the future.

In March, supervisors suspended a grant worth nearly $300,000 in tobacco settlement revenue earmarked for sex education because the organization performs abortions. At the urging of county lawyers, they vote April 28 to reinstate the grant, but then voted unanimously to direct the county Health Care Agency to use tobacco settlement revenue at community clinics to direct health services, rather than health education.