Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence Releases Annual Gun Law State Scorecard

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

 

gunlawscorecardEvery year, more than 30,000 Americans die from gun violence. But there’s more to the story. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has been fighting for smart gun laws for over 20 years, and we’ve noticed a trend: the states with stronger gun regulation have lower gun death rates, and the states with weaker regulation have higher gun death rates.

 

By grading all 50 states on their gun laws and showing the clear correlation between smart gun laws and reduced gun violence, we can encourage state legislators to adopt the common-sense solutions that will save lives. And not just at home—we found that states with the weakest gun laws are also responsible for trafficking the most crime guns.

 

The good news is that there’s been tremendous progress. Since the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook in 2012, 37 states have passed an unprecedented 99 laws strengthening gun regulation. Ten states have enacted major overhauls.

 

We grade the states each year to urge our leaders to build on the momentum for smart gun laws in America, stand up to the gun lobby, and not rest until the entire country has an A+.

 

Here are some examples of new legislation this year:

 

California enacted the groundbreaking Gun Violence Restraining Order law. Crafted in response to this summer’s tragic shooting in Isla Vista, where the shooter exhibited warning signs of dangerous behavior, this lifesaving new law allows family members and law enforcement officers to ask a court to disarm people who are a danger to themselves or others and prohibit them from purchasing or possessing guns.

 

In Washington State, voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative requiring background checks for all firearms, making Washington the ninth state, plus the District of Columbia, to require background checks on private sales at the point of transfer. An additional eight states require background checks when an individual applies for a permit to purchase a firearm.

 

Raising its smart gun law grade, Massachusetts passed a comprehensive bill strengthening its gun laws in the areas of domestic violence, background checks, and licensing of gun owners.

 

Read the full report

 

Note to Corporations and Health Watch readers: Our next post will be on January 7,2015.

Senate Committee Clear Obama’s NHTSA Pick Amid Air Bag Recall Furor

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

Law360 reports that the Senate Commerce Committee last week unanimously approved Mark. R. Rosekind, President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a week after the nominee assured the panel that he would restore the agency’s tarnished reputation following the General Motors Co. and Takata Corp. recalls. Rosekind has said he would boost efforts to catch automakers that don’t report safety defects and to enforce recalls.

Why McDonald’s says it wants to be in the schools

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

If McDonald’s has its way, reports CBS MoneyWatch the three R’s might end up being reading, writing and Ronald McDonald. That’s because the fast-food giant is planning to refocus on marketing to children and families in response to a serious problem on its plate. Thanks to changing tastes, the fast-food chain has suffered seven straight months of declining U.S. sales, with parents increasingly opting for rivals’ seemingly healthier meals.

Exposed: Decades of Denial on Poisons

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

Last week, The Center for Public Integrity announced that it was joining with Columbia University and City University of New York to make public some 20,000 pages of benzene documents — the inaugural collection in Exposed: Decades of denial on poisons, an archive of previously secret oil and chemical industry memoranda, emails, letters, presentations and meeting minutes. Hundreds of thousands of additional documents on different chemicals will be added in 2015 and beyond. To find out more about Exposed, Corporations and Health Watch director Nicholas Freudenberg interviewed one of its founders, Gerald Markowitz, CUNY Distinguished Professor of History and Public Health.

 

Gerry Markowitz
Gerald Markowitz

CHW: What led you and your colleagues to create this new resource for scholars, journalists and activists?

 

GM: Over the past 20 to 25 years David Rosner (Ronald Lauterstein Professor of History at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health) and I have been using the private records of corporations that have been obtained through discovery procedures in legal cases. These include hundreds of thousands of documents from the chemical industry, the lead industry, the silica industry among others, which we have used in our books and articles. For many years we have worked with Merlin Chowkwanyun, currently a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will be an assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia next year. In addition to his extraordinary talents as a scholar, Chowkwanyun is knowledgeable about how to make masses of documents available and searchable for researchers. Together we realized that these documents could be used to tell multiple stories and thus they could be a tremendous resource for scholars, journalists, students and activists.

 

CHW: How do you think a resource like this can contribute to a better understanding of the impact of corporations on health?

 

GM: These are internal corporate documents that often hold information found nowhere else. This is an opportunity for people to understand not only the effects of corporate actions on health, but also the thinking within corporations about how and why they take the actions they do. It also provides us with the opportunity to examine secret studies that corporations have conducted on a variety of products and substances as well as their attempts to influence government activities and public perceptions of their products.

 

CHW: Why did you decide to partner with the Center on Public Integrity, an investigative journalism organization?

 

GM: It is crucial that information that is in these documents gets to as broad a public and scholarly community as possible. CPI has a rich and distinguished history of examining and analyzing a wide range of public health, occupational and environmental issues and has been very successful in getting its stories into the public arena.

 

CHW: How can students in public health, history and other disciplines use this resource?

 

GM: This resource is open to the public and we hope that it will provide the basis of many masters theses, PhD dissertations, and articles.

 

CHW: What future do you see for this database? Are you hoping that it will include documents from other industries?

 

GM: We are just at the beginning of developing this database. As time goes on we will be expanding and refining the search engine so that users will be able to make use of it in many creative and productive ways. In addition, although right now we only have the benzene documents on line, in the coming months we will be adding a wide range of other industry documents, including those of the chemical industry, the asbestos industry, the silica industry and the lead industry among others.

 

Benzene
Benzene

 

See the following CPI reports based on documents in Exposed:

 

Benzene and worker cancers: ‘An American tragedy’

A dozen dirty documents

Internal documents reveal industry ‘pattern of behavior’ on toxic chemicals

New battlefront for petrochemical industry: benzene and childhood leukemia

 

 

Draft Regulations Ban Smoking in Public Places in China

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Anti-tobacco advocates welcomed a new draft national smoking control regulations for public places, reports China Daily, but said the rules could still be strengthened. The draft by the National Health and Family Planning Commission was published on the website of the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, pending public consultation. It would ban smoking in public places and also ban all forms of tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion of tobacco products, as well as certain smoking scenes in films and TV shows.

Gaps in FDA’s Antibiotics Policy

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In December 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took steps to eliminate the use of antibiotics in food animals for growth promotion. It asked drug companies to remove indications for “feed efficiency” and “weight gain” from labels of antibiotic products and require veterinarians to oversee addition of these drugs to feed and water. The new policy is intended to reduce antibiotic misuse, which contributes to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. A new report from the Pew Charitable Trust examines gaps in FDA policy that may allow some harmful practices to persist.

Gun Industry Divestment Campaign

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

Cross posted from Santa Barbara Coalition Against Gun Violence

 

gunviolencePlease join the Coalition Against Gun Violence (CAGV) in a Campaign to Divest the University of California system of its holdings in the gun manufacturing industry.

 

In the wake of the May 23, 2014, tragedy in Isla Vista, California, the University of California Santa Barbara community, Campaign to Unload, and CAGV have come together to turn grief into action. Along with students, faculty and alumni we are demanding action from the University of California: Transparency of its $88 billion endowment and a ban on all future investments in the gun industry.

 

The UC community deserves to know whether its institution is helping to fund gun violence; and the governing board of the University of California has a moral obligation to take a clear stance against investing in the gun industry that continues to endanger the UC community and the nation.

 

The Regents of the University of California must stand with UCSB and fight to prevent more senseless tragedy by pledging it will not invest in gun violence.

 

• PLEDGE TO STAND WITH UCSB to demand that UC Regents adopt a gun-free endowment: http://www.campaign2unload.org/pledge-to-stand-with-uc-santa-barbara-and-say-not-one-more/

 

• SIGN THE PETITION to tell the University of California Board Of Regents to take a clear stance against investing in gun violence: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/university-of-california-1

 

• LEARN MORE ABOUT DIVESTMENT and the Campaign to Unload. Start a Campaign in your City or on your Campus: http://www.campaign2unload.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Divestment-Toolkit_UCSB.pdf

 

 

Worried about impact on industry, Japan may expand air bag recalls

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

25-years-of-the-airbag_100223157_mHonda Motor and Mazda Motor may have to recall another 200,000 cars in Japan to replace Takata Corp air bags if Takata complies with a U.S. order to recall cars across the United States rather than just in humid regions, reports Japan Today. Several automakers in the U.S. have issued regional recalls of certain models to investigate what is causing some Takata air bags to explode with excessive force. U.S. safety regulators have ordered Takata to have those recalls expanded nationwide.

Alcohol abuse costing Britain £6 billion a year

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

Alcohol abuse could be costing the United Kingdom up to £6 billion a year in NHS bills, premature death, losses to business and drink-related crimes and accidents, reported The Daily Mail. A study by the Royal College of Physicians said drink-related health problems could account for up to 12% of total NHS spending on hospitals, about £3 billion. Campaigners said that with the estimated £3 billion lost through absenteeism, unemployment, premature deaths and alcohol-related crimes and accidents the total cost of excessive drinking is £6 billion.