Tag: regulations

Congressional Committee Invites Hemp Industry Expert To Testify At Hearing On How FDA ‘Failed’ To Regulate Products

A congressional committee has scheduled a hearing for next week focused on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), inviting a hemp industry representative to testify on how the agency “failed” to approve certain products such as CBD.

The House Oversight Committee hearing—titled “Restoring Trust in FDA: Rooting Out Illicit Products”—is set to take place on Wednesday.

FDA “failed to approve products and take necessary enforcement actions resulting in a flood of illicit and counterfeit products entering the country,” a memo on the hearing says.

The meeting won’t exclusively focus on cannabis issues. But among the four listed witnesses selected to testify is Jonathan Miller of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, an organization that has long criticized FDA’s inaction on CBD and other cannabinoid regulations since the crop was federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill.

Miller told Marijuana Moment on Friday that he expects the hearing to be “wide-ranging,” but his testimony will concentrate on “all the challenges the hemp industry has been having by the FDA’s failure to regulate our products.”

He said that his testimony will serve as an “update” on issues he outlined during a 2023 hearing before a subcommittee of the full panel, where lawmakers raised concerns about FDA’s refusal to establish rules allowing for the marketing of federally legal hemp as a food item or dietary supplement.

In the two years since that initial meeting, the hemp market has faced repeated regulatory challenges—with a growing number of states moving to enact bans on certain hemp products due to the lack of regulations around intoxicating cannabinoids such as delta-8 THC that have become widely available.

“Nothing has happened at the FDA” to resolve the issue, Miller said. “And we think these ban efforts have a lot to do with the fact that we’re not regulated. So if we can get regulated, hopefully people will drop the efforts to ban our products.”

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Repeal Government Regulators. Improve Safety and Quality, End Inflation

Voluntary cooperation is robust, multiply-protected, and loss-limiting, and brings healthy deflation. A government regulator makes a system fragile, fraught with a single point of failure, and loss-compounding, and brings sickening inflation.

Donald Trump and his unity team members Robert Kennedy and Elon Musk promise to limit cronyism and slash waste.

Both approaches deny that state-government and national-government administrative states are themselves peak cronyism. If government people stop hosting business-crony socialists but still host activist-crony socialists, that’s still tyranny. Also, it’s unconstitutional.Thomas J. DiLorenzoBuy New $11.57(as of 10:36 UTC – Details)

The only adequate approaches are to fully executively close and legislatively repeal.

When there are no government regulators, that doesn’t mean that there’s a vacuum. Instead, people naturally take care of themselves and one another.

Voluntary Cooperation Increases Safety and Quality

Many people take advantage of the considerable information they have available and use it to make the choices that they expect to be the best for them. In doing so, they self-regulate.

Their choices affect others, creating a network of interactions. In this network, people’s interactions with others regulate the others.

So then when people are free, they increase safety and quality by taking decentralized, interdependent actions:

  • Product raters compete to find and play up even small advantages and disadvantages.
  • Media people spread bad news very quickly.
  • Customers stop buying harmful products very quickly.
  • Retailers and distributors stop carrying harmful products.
  • Civil complainants can eliminate product lines and companies.
  • Insurers work to prevent and limit losses.
  • Producers anticipate problems and prevent them.

The resulting system is robust and resilient, and the people in it select naturally for improved performance. This is why freeing people to take care of themselves in the Dutch Republic, England, and the USA enabled people to create dramatic gains in how much value they added, bringing modern material comforts to the world.

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California’s Regulations, Not Price Gouging, Cause High Gas Prices, USC Study Finds

Gov. Gavin Newsom stands behind his claim that “Big Oil” is responsible for California’s higher gas prices and vowed on April 1 to continue his fight against the industry. The pledge comes after new research put the blame on state regulations and policies for the high prices at the pump.

California’s Democratic leaders have come out strongly against the oil industry in recent years, saying the companies’ gouging was causing record-high gas prices.

“Gov. Newsom has done more than any other governor in recent history to tackle the challenge of rising gas prices—despite what the oil industry and its allies say,” a spokesman for Newsom told The Epoch Times in an email Tuesday.

A new study published March 16 by Michael Mische from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California says the evidence contradicts Newsom. Mische’s research indicated California’s high gas prices were caused by the state’s regulations and policies.

“There is no economic data to support the allegation of price gouging,” Mische told The Epoch Times. “It just doesn’t exist.”

The professor also pushed back against Newsom’s claim that he was an industry ally.

“The data is the data,” Mische said.

Mische has been on the USC faculty since 1997, where he coordinates the business school’s management consulting undergraduate and graduate programs.

In March 2023, the governor signed a “windfall-profits penalty law” to target oil companies. The new law created a slew of regulations and extensive oversight for oil companies.

Newsom’s office said the governor saved Californians billions of dollars at the pump by signing the law.

The measure allows the governor’s appointed Energy Commission to fine and penalize oil companies if they earned profits beyond state-imposed limits.

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GREAT NEWS: Trump Energy Department Rolling Back Biden Admin’s Regulations on Home Appliances

Over the last four years, the Biden administration repeatedly tried to control what kinds of home appliances Americans would be allowed to buy.

They tried to outright ban gas stoves, then denied it and mocked anyone who suggested this was happening.

Then, the Biden administration was caught working with outside groups to do this.

Now, all of that is finally changing. Check out this tweet from the Trump Energy Department…

From the Energy Department website:

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright today announced the Department of Energy (DOE) has further postponed the implementation of three of the Biden-Harris administration’s restrictive mandates on home appliances. These actions, taken in accordance with President Donald Trump’s Executive Order, “Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation,” marks a key step in lowering costs, enhancing performance, and expanding options for American consumers.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Energy is taking critical steps every day to help American families prosper,” said Secretary Wright. “By removing burdensome regulations put in place by the Biden administration, we are returning freedom of choice to the American people, ensuring consumers can choose the home appliances that work best for their lives and budgets. This power should not belong to the federal government.”

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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin Launches Largest Deregulatory Effort in U.S. History to ‘Save Coal, Bring Down Cost of Living’

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin said it is “not a binary choice” to either protect the environment or grow the economy.

“We don’t have to just choose one,” he explained.

Joining Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matt Boyle on the Breitbart News Saturday radio show, Zeldin went over his recent historic launch of the largest deregulatory effort in U.S. history and talked about the EPA’s sweeping deregulations to “save the coal industry” and “bring down the cost of living.” 

After announcing 31 deregulations on Wednesday, including the termination of the Biden administration’s “Environmental Justice and DEI arms of the agency (EJ/DEI),” Zeldin told Boyle, “Undoubtedly, we’re going to be able to create jobs, including inside the American auto sector.”

“We will bring down the cost of living. It’s going to be easier to heat your home, to purchase a vehicle, to operate a business,” the former New York congressman said, touting President Donald Trump’s economic plan. 

“A lot of Americans struggling to make ends meet want common sense back into the federal government, and we’re going to do our part at the EPA,” Zeldin continued. “So that’s why we made this announcement. It’s a lot of regulatory actions impacting the energy space. We want to make it easier for people to be able to access choice.”

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More Liberal Tears in the Forecast… BREAKING: President Trump Authorizes DOGE to Start Cutting Government Regulations

Elon Musk called this the “biggest news of the day!”

On Wednesday night President Trump signed a new presidential action titled:  Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Deregulatory Initiative.

President Trump just authorized the DOGE Team to focus on “the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.”

The order gives government agency heads 60 days to identify the following classes of regulations:

(i) unconstitutional regulations and regulations that raise serious constitutional difficulties, such as exceeding the scope of the power vested in the Federal Government by the Constitution;
(ii) regulations that are based on unlawful delegations of legislative power;
(iii) regulations that are based on anything other than the best reading of the underlying statutory authority or prohibition;
(iv) regulations that implicate matters of social, political, or economic significance that are not authorized by clear statutory authority;
(v) regulations that impose significant costs upon private parties that are not outweighed by public benefits;
(vi) regulations that harm the national interest by significantly and unjustifiably impeding technological innovation, infrastructure development, disaster response, inflation reduction, research and development, economic development, energy production, land use, and foreign policy objectives; and
(vii) regulations that impose undue burdens on small business and impede private enterprise and entrepreneurship.
(b) In conducting the review required by subsection (a) of this section, agencies shall prioritize review of those rules that satisfy the definition of “significant regulatory action” in Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993 (Regulatory Planning and Review), as amended.
(c) Within 60 days of the date of this order, agency heads shall provide to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget a list of all regulations identified by class as listed in subsection (a) of this section.
(d) The Administrator of OIRA shall consult with agency heads to develop a Unified Regulatory Agenda that seeks to rescind or modify these regulations, as appropriate.

This follows President Trump’s executive order in January named “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation,” which calls for agencies to identify and eliminate ten existing regulations for each new regulation created. 

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Biden’s Record-Breaking Regulatory Run

The fourth and final year of the Biden administration included record levels of federal regulations—including more than a dozen new rules finalized in the last hours before Inauguration Day.

Former President Joe Biden’s final year in office “set a blistering pace,” writes Clyde Wayne Crews, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), in a piece for Forbes. During 2024, the Biden administration created 3,248 new rules, by Crews’ count, and finished out the year by publishing 107,262 pages in the Federal Register, the weekly publication that lists all new rules, proposed rules, and other public notices.

The number of pages in the Federal Register is a blunt, imperfect way to track the activities of the administrative state. Still, it offers a useful view of historical regulatory trends, and Biden’s output in 2024 is the highest total ever recorded.

But the Biden administration didn’t stop when the new year hit. In the first three weeks of 2025, Crews notes in a blog post for CEI, the outgoing administration issued 243 new rules across 7,641 pages of the Federal Register. That includes 15 final rules and 23 proposed rules that weren’t published until Tuesday, January 21—the day after Trump was sworn into office—because they’d been wrapped up over the previous weekend.

That final flurry of regulatory activity cemented “Biden’s legacy as a prolific regulator,” writes Crews.

Not only did the number of regulations approved by Biden set new records, but the costs associated with those rules soared to new heights too. His administration issued $1.8 trillion in cumulative regulatory costs over four years, according to an analysis by the American Action Forum (AAF), which tracks the estimated regulatory costs published in the Federal Register.

That shatters the previous record, set by the Obama administration, which over eight years pushed through regulations costing $493.6 billion.

The biggest single regulation issued by the Biden administration was the new tailpipe emissions for automobiles that are scheduled to take effect in 2027. That alone will cost more than $870 billion. Even without that big hit, however, the Biden administration would have easily landed in first place.

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Every Bureaucrat Destroys 138 Jobs

An Auburn University study says every single regulator destroys fully 138 private sector jobs every year you keep him on the job.

With nearly 300,000 federal regulators, the shock is that we still have any jobs at all.

The Two Scariest Words in the English Language

A lot of the excitement around the Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE — focuses on the dollars saved. But more important is all the things the federal government destroys with those dollars.

Specifically, the millions of jobs destroyed by the two scariest words in the English language: federal regulators.

A few weeks ago I mentioned how DOGE under Elon and Vivek is taking aim at the regulatory mothership that strangles the American economy and fuels the totalitarian administrative state — you may remember it from Covid.

A mother ship that is oddly enough unconstitutional according to a pair of recent Supreme Court decisions — Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo and West Virginia v EPA.

I asserted this could unleash the economy like nothing we’ve seen in the past century.

And the reason is because it’s hard to overstate just how destructive regulations are. 

Every Regulator Destroys 138 Jobs

One 2017 study by the Phoenix Center and Auburn University found that every single full-time regulator destroys 158 jobs. 

GDP-adjusted to today, that translates to $16.5 million of economic output. For a hundred-thousand dollar bureaucrat.

This lost output is made of jobs and businesses that were never started. Or were stunted by strangling regulations — which are generally bought by big corporations specifically to strangle small competitors.

Along with mom and pops chased into bankruptcy as collateral damage to new regulations — say, a diner forced to spend $30,000 on a low-energy exhaust fan.

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Congress ‘Can Regulate Virtually Anything’

Two years after Harvard gave him the boot and three years before Congress banned LSD, Timothy Leary set out on a road trip from Millbrook, New York, in a rented station wagon. The 45-year-old psychologist and psychedelic enthusiast was accompanied by his girlfriend, Rosemary Woodruff, and his two teenaged children, Susan and Jack. They had planned a month-long family vacation in Yucatan, Mexico, after which Leary and Woodruff would stay behind to work on his newly commissioned autobiography. Leary and his companions arrived in Laredo, Texas, on the evening of December 22, 1965, and crossed the international bridge to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

At the customs station on the Mexican side of the bridge, Leary recalled in his 1983 memoir Flashbacks, he learned that the visa he needed would not be approved until the next day. That turned out to be the least of his troubles.

“All the grass is out of the car, right?” Leary asked as he started driving the station wagon back across the bridge. Jack had flushed his, but Woodruff said she had been unable to retrieve her “silver box” of pot from her bag because “there were two uniformed porters leaning against the car.” Since trying to toss the contraband off the side of the bridge seemed inadvisable, Susan hid it in her clothing.

At the inspection point on the U.S. side, Leary explained that he “didn’t enter Mexico” and had nothing to declare. After a suspicious customs agent picked up what looked like a cannabis seed from the car floor near Leary’s feet, the encounter escalated into searches of the vehicle, the passengers, and their luggage. A “personal search” of Susan discovered what the U.S. Supreme Court would later describe as “a silver snuff box containing semi-refined marihuana and three partially smoked marihuana cigarettes”—about half an ounce, all told.

Leary claimed ownership of the stash, which earned him a 30-year prison sentence. That astonishingly severe penalty was based on two federal charges: transportation of illegally imported marijuana and failure to pay a transfer tax on the contraband.

Those puzzling charges provide a window on the constitutionally dubious origins of federal drug prohibition, which was smuggled into the U.S. Code disguised as tax legislation. Federal gun control laws followed a similar route, expanding along with conventional conceptions of congressional power.

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E.U. Regulations Created a Port Wine Black Market

People have been making wine in the verdant hills of northern Portugal’s Douro Valley for nearly 2,000 years. Nowadays, the region is home to more than 19,000 grape farmers and 1,000 companies tending terraced vineyards that tower above the Douro River below.

Hundreds of these vineyards are small, often family-owned, properties called quintas, many of which produce port: a syrupy, sweet fortified wine. As a European Union–protected designation of origin product (similar to French Champagne or Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano), the production, labeling, and sale of port are heavily regulated—sometimes to the detriment of the small-scale operators keeping the cultural practice alive.

When I visited the Douro Valley this fall, one quinta owner shared that she couldn’t officially sell port because of burdensome government regulations. All port sellers are required to keep at least 75,000 liters in reserve at all times, she explained—a standard that large producers can meet, but one that might bankrupt a small quinta like hers. In effect, she could only participate in this important cultural heritage as a black market seller.

Francisco Montenegro, owner of the Douro Valley–based Aneto Wines, notes that would-be port sellers have to grapple with several regulations that make it difficult for them to enter the market. On top of the 75,000-liter stock minimum, port producers are allowed to sell or market only one-third of their output, “thus forcing the producer to let [two-thirds] of their wines age.” They have to register under a specific tax status “as they work with spirits,” which requires them to “pay more customs taxes.” Government regulations also mandate that producers “wait at least 3 or 4 years if they want to bottle a normal tawny” port, Montenegro says.

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