For the fourth time, Toyota has agreed to pay a fine to settle allegations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that the automaker delayed a safety recall, reports The New York Times. In a news release, the safety agency said Toyota would pay $17.35 million, the maximum allowed by law. Toyota did not admit any wrongdoing and said it was paying the fine to avoid a continued dispute with the safety agency. The automaker said the same thing when agreeing to pay the three previous fines, which totaled $48.8 million.
Gun makers, video game industry and NRA partner to promote fun and guns to children
In recent years, reports The New York Times, the firearms and video game industries have quietly forged a mutually beneficial marketing relationship. The McMillan Group, the maker of a high-powered sniper’s rifle, and Magpul, which sells high-capacity magazines and other accessories for assault-style weapons are listed as partners of the Electronic Arts, a maker of video games. Assault-style rifles made by Bushmaster Firearms have a roster of credits on various video games. Many of the same producers of firearms and related equipment are also financial backers of the N.R.A. For example, Glock, Browning and Remington are listed as corporate sponsors of the NRA.
Time restrictions on TV advertisements ineffective in reducing youth exposure to alcohol ads
Efforts to reduce underage exposure to alcohol advertising in Europe by implementing time restrictions have not worked, according to new research from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Dutch Institute for Alcohol Policy. The report, published in the Journal of Public Affairs, confirms what Dutch researchers had already learned in that country: time restrictions on alcohol advertising actually increase teen exposure, because companies move the advertising to late night.
The bribery aisle: How Wal-Mart got its way in Mexico
In its continuing investigation of the illegal practices of Wal-Mart corporation, the New York Times reports that “Wal-Mart de Mexico was not the reluctant victim of a corrupt culture that insisted on bribes as the cost of doing business. Nor did it pay bribes merely to speed up routine approvals. Rather, Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited. It used bribes to subvert democratic governance — public votes, open debates, transparent procedures. It used bribes to circumvent regulatory safeguards that protect Mexican citizens from unsafe construction. It used bribes to outflank rivals.”
Supreme Court to consider ‘pay for delay’ deals keeping generic drugs off the market
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether so-called pay for delay settlements that temporarily keep generic competitors out of the market are lawful in patent litigation, reports the ABA Journal. In “pay for delay” cases, brand-name drug companies pay a would-be generic competitor to drop a challenge of the brand-name patent and to keep the generic version of the drug off the market for a specified time period. The FTC maintains that such arrangements cost consumers $3.5 billion a year.
Trans-Pacific Partnership and the slow-motion corporate coup
In Yes Magazine, Lori Wallach describes how a highly secretive trade agreement aims to penalize countries that protect workers, consumers, and the environment. However, she writes, the growing opposition goes beyond the usual trade justice suspects.
Health groups tell Nickelodeon to stop hawking junk food
A coalition of health groups is calling on Nickelodeon to stop airing commercials that promote unhealthy foods. The Hill reports that the groups urged the channel and its parent company, Viacom, to implement strong nutrition standards for the foods marketed on Nickelodeon and by its shows’ characters. SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer should not be licensed to advertise foods like imitation fruit snacks or Popsicles, the American Academy of Pediatrics and others wrote. “Research shows that food marketing is an important factor contributing to children’s poor diets and obesity,” the letter stated. “The majority of foods marketed to children remain of poor nutritional quality. The [federal Institute of Medicine] concluded that marketing puts children’s health at risk.”
Federal judges rule that ban on off-label marketing violates freedom of speech
The New York Times reports that a federal appeals court threw out the conviction of a drug company sales representative who sold a drug for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In a case that could have broad ramifications for the pharmaceutical industry, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan ruled that the ban on so-called off-label marketing violated the representative’s freedom of speech. In recent years, drug companies have paid billions of dollars in penalties to the federal government after being accused of marketing blockbuster drugs for off-label uses.
The alcohol industry’s plan to give America a giant drinking problem
Why has the United States, so similar to Great Britain in everything from language to pop culture trends, managed to avoid the huge spike of alcohol abuse that has gripped the UK? Tim Heffernan asks in the Washington Monthly. The reasons are many, he writes, but one stands out above all: the market in Great Britain is rigged to foster excessive alcohol consumption in ways it is not in the United States—at least not yet. By deliberately hindering economies of scale and protecting middlemen in the booze business, America’s system of regulation was designed to be willfully inefficient, thereby making the cost of producing, distributing, and retailing alcohol higher than it would otherwise be and checking the political power of the industry.
Judge orders tobacco companies to say they lied
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered tobacco companies to publish corrective statements that say they lied about the dangers of smoking and that disclose smoking’s health effects, including the death on average of 1,200 people a day. Business Week reports that Judge Gladys Kessler ordered tobacco companies to publish corrective ads stating that a federal court has concluded that the defendant tobacco companies “deliberately deceived the American public about the health effects of smoking” and “that smoking kills more people than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol combined, and that “secondhand smoke kills over 3,000 Americans a year.”
Corporations and Health Watch 