Five reasons Biden’s move to rejoin the WHO is bad news

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The WHO promotes permissive policies on prostitution, drug use, abortion, gender theory, and sex for kids.

Last year President Trump halted US funding to the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO). On his first day in office President Biden reinstated US funding for the WHO. Here are five reasons this is a very bad news:

1. The WHO advocates for decriminalizing prostitution. The WHO publication “Sexual Health, Human Rights and the Law” says, “All countries should work toward decriminalization of sex work.” Additionally, at DecriminalizeSex.Work, the WHO is listed as a proud partner in the decriminalization cause. The WHO’s push to make the world into a giant Las Vegas strip downplays the myriad risks to “sex workers” including assault, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and death as documented by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. The WHO’s enthusiasm for prostitution also ignores the fact that there are no independent studies showing that decriminalizing the sex trade makes it safer.

2. The WHO advocates for decriminalizing drug use. An official WHO report in 2014 said, “Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize injection and other use of drugs.” In 2015, the WHO published “HIV and Young Transgender People” which urges the governments of the world to “work toward the decriminalization of…drug use” in the name of helping young people fulfill their “needs and rights.” The WHO—an official United Nations entity—appears to be pushing the decriminalization of injection drugs despite the fact that there is no consensus among UN member states on whether injection drugs should be decriminalized. It is especially troubling that the WHO is recommending decriminalization of drugs for “young people” which is defined by them as “people 10–24 years of age.”

3. The WHO advocates for legalizing abortion worldwide. The WHO produces manuals, videos, and programs that promote abortion and seek to expand the legalized and “safe” killing of pre-born babies throughout the world. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was likely chosen for his post as head of the World Health Organization in part because of his successful campaign to expand abortion as Minister of Health in Ethiopia and his deep commitment to abortion and other tenets of the sexual rights agenda. The WHO regularly partners with abortion giant International Planned Parenthood Federation and has a close relationship with Ipas, maker of the EasyGrip portable abortion device and other grisly abortion innovations. Ipas is pursuing a scheme to expand abortion in accordance with the WHO’s guidance on “self-care” which would enable “health intermediaries” (instead of doctors) to distribute abortion-inducing pills to pregnant women, without a prescription. These women’s babies would then be disgorged into toilets and garbage cans in their own homes.

4. The WHO promotes gender ideology for children. The WHO endorses UN guidelines stating that children should be instructed on gender incongruence starting at age five. The WHO says it is “important to recognize identities that do not fit into the binary male or female sex categories” and that gender conflicted individuals need access to hormonal treatment and invasive, irreversible surgeries “for the protection of their health.” The WHO seems content to ignore the staggering risks (see here and here) that can accompany hormone treatments and transgender surgeries including blood clots, breast cancer, coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, gallstones, liver dysfunction, hypertension, uterine cancer, incomplete mineralization of bone, transition regret, suicidality, sterility, and diminished or demolished sexual function.

5. The WHO advocates for “sexual rights” for children. TheWHO is a supporter of the children’s sexual rights movement and of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) which is founded on the premise that children have inborn sexual rights. The name and logo of the WHO appears on the front cover of UNESCO’s 2018 International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education. This document is peppered with references to children’s sexual rights including these statements:

  • “(Young) people want and need sexuality and sexual health information as early and comprehensively as possible…”
  • Children should have “agency in their own sexual practices and relationships.”
  • Comprehensive Sexuality Education can “help children…form respectful and healthy relationships with…sexual partners.”

Additionally, official WHO partner International Planned Parenthood Federation makes these statements in its 2011 document, Exclaim! Young People’s Guide to ‘Sexual Rights: An IPPF declaration’:

  • “Young people are sexual beings…It is important for all young people around the world to be able to explore, experience and express their sexualities in healthy, positive, pleasurable and safe ways. This can only happen when young people’s sexual rights are guaranteed.”
  • “Sexuality and sexual pleasure are important parts of being human for everyone—no matter what age, no matter if you’re married or not and no matter if you want to have children or not.”
  • “There is a common misconception that young people are not or should not be sexual beings with the exception of certain groups, such as married young people or young people above a certain age. Sexuality is a central aspect of being human during all phases of each person’s life.”

The WHO not only supports sexual rights for children but is a strong advocate for eliminating parental consent in regard to abortion, contraception, and other sexual services for young people.

With these five reasons in view, it is dumbfounding that the Biden administration made a top priority of ensnaring the US in this ethically corrupt organization once again. This is a significant setback to the children, women, and families of the world.

COLUMN BY

Kimberly Ells

Kimberly Ells is the author of The Invincible Family: Why the Global Campaign to… .

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Admin To INCREASE Drug Prices – Reversing Trump Policy Designed To Lower Insulin Prices

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President Trump’s policies continue to reveal what destroyers and enemies of the people the Democrats are.

President Biden has been reversing or pausing some rules put in place under former President Donald Trump this week, including one designed to bring down the price of insulin.

Biden admin freezes Trump HHS rule meant to lower insulin prices

The rule has been put on hold for 60 days pending review

By Brittany De Lea | Fox News January 23, 2020:

Is Biden’s rush to reverse Trump policies in nation’s best interest?

FOX News Washington correspondent Rich Edson details the foreign policy concerns on ‘Special Report’

President Biden has been reversing or pausing some rules put in place under former President Donald Trump this week, including one designed to bring down the price of insulin.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday announced that the directive would be put on hold among a number of other measures that were passed under Trump, but are not yet in effect.

The measure, signed off on in December, aimed to require some community health centers to deliver savings to low-income patients for insulin and epinephrine in a bid to bring down unaffordable prices.

The rule was scheduled to go into effect on Friday but has since been delayed until March 22.

On Wednesday, White House chief of staff Ron Klain directed agencies to pause orders signed towards the end of Trump’s term so they could be reviewed.

The order directs the administration to immediately withdraw rules that have been sent to the Office of Financial Research but not yet published in the Federal Register. For those that have been published, but are not yet effective, members are directed to “consider postponing the rules’ effective dates for 60 days.”

EDIOTRS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Facebook, Twitter, Google et al have shadowbanned, suspended and in some cases deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here— it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever.

Feminists: Biden Gender Identity Order ‘Unprecedented Attack on Women’s Rights and Liberty for Everybody’

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Then why did you vote for him? Because you thought he would govern from the center? This is what the anti-Trump feminists get for voting for Joe Biden. The ruination of women’s athletics. This dreadful executive order will make it impossible for female athletes to compete on a fair basis. Male-to-female transgenders are obviously built much differently than women.

Does President Biden even understand how damaging these executive orders are? Does he even know what he is signing? Or is he just doing what the Left tells him to do? It’s so sad.

Related – Biden executive orders the ‘wishlist of the far left,’ Rubio says 

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Feminists: Biden Gender Identity Order ‘Unprecedented Attack on Women’s Rights and Liberty for Everybody

By Breitbart, January 22, 2021

Feminists from the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) are condemning President Joe Biden’s executive order that removes any legal recognition of the two sexes and eliminates crucial protections for women in the federal government and beyond.

In a post at WoLF’s website Thursday, the feminist group called Biden’s executive order “an unprecedented attack on women’s rights and liberty for everybody,” noting Biden has circumvented the role of Congress to achieve what many consider to be the most contentious elements of the Equality Act:

With this action, Biden is bypassing the legislative process to implement the most controversial provisions of the Equality Act—changing the definition of sex in federal anti-discrimination regulations so that female people are no longer a discrete class with protected status under the law. As we predicted, the new administration is relying on the Bostock decision to do so.

The group cites the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Bostock v. Clayton Count, which, it states, “was clear … the ruling was only meant to be applied to hiring and firing discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.”

“While we strongly support protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation,” the feminists assert, “The Biden administration has grossly expanded the application of the decision with far-reaching implications for women’s rights in nearly every aspect of public life, including Title IX.”

Biden’s executive order, released on the first day of his presidency, embraces transgender ideology:

It is the policy of my Administration to prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, and to fully enforce Title VII and other laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” Biden said, promoting the pro-transgender policies of allowing boys in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms and admitting young men to compete against women in athletics.

WoLF said, as a consequence of Biden’s action, “female federal employees no longer have right to privacy, forced into compelled speech that ‘validates’ men’s identities.”

The feminists explained:

In addition to protecting people who identify as transgender against hiring and firing discrimination, this will also give male employees the right to self-declare themselves to be female and be treated as female for the purpose of sex-segregated facilities. This means that in federal buildings and in workplaces run by federal contractors, the four million women who work for the federal government will be forced to share bathrooms and gym locker rooms with men who say they identify as women.

“Federal employees will likely also be forced to use ‘preferred pronouns’ (inaccurate pronouns) for men who identify as women,” WoLF continued. “This should be seen as a major threat to freedom of speech and is part of a growing pattern of government bodies compelling speech from employees.”

On the first day of Biden’s presidency, the White House contact form was changed to include the visitor’s “pronouns.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Admin’s BIG LIE: Claims Trump Admin Lacked a Vaccine Distribution Plan

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More than 56.7 million shots have been administered in the USA. How the hell does this perverted segregationist think it happened?

This is not true. President Trump had a robust distribution plan for the vaccine, which under his leadership was produced in record time. The details of the distribution plan (Operation Warp Speed) are here. Unfortunately Donald Trump has been de-platformed by social media, so he can’t defend himself against these lies. Horrible.

Critics slam Biden admin for claiming Trump admin lacked a vaccine distribution plan

By Sara Carter, January 21, 2021

Following sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work telling CNN that newly sworn-in President Joe Biden and advisors are inheriting no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration, many have hit back at claims that former President Donald Trump lacked a distribution plan.

President Trump did in fact create what he called “Operation Warp Speed” to develop and distribute a vaccine against the novel coronavirus within a matter of months. The goal was “to produce and deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with the initial doses available by January 2021…”

Moreover, the administration for the most part delegated to the states the distribution of the vaccine to the public.

Click here to read the Trump plan.

But the Biden administration claims they are “going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source told CNN.

Another source illustrated to CNN in its Thursday report the moment they said it became apparent that the Biden administration would have to essentially start from “square one” because there simply was no plan as: “Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence.”

Jeff Zients, Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, also recently told reporters, according to The Hill, “What we’re inheriting is so much worse than we could have imagined.”

Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) called Zients’ comments an “old Washington spin,” in a statement.

In a tweet sharing the statement from the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, the GOP members of the subcommittee wrote, “The Trump Administration’s Operation Warp Speed laid the groundwork for success.”

“The fact is the Biden Administration inherited contracts for 300 million doses of vaccines for two approved vaccines and two in the final stage of clinical trials,” Scalise said in the statement.

“Because of Operation Warp Speed and President Trump’s strong leadership, the United States is already administering close to a million vaccines a day. By doing simple math, we are on track to deliver 100 million doses in 100 days, showing that President Biden’s plan is not a new plan at all and leans on the Trump Administration’s success,” he argued.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Facebook, Twitter, Google et al have shadowbanned, suspended and in some cases deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here— it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever.

Our First Anti-Catholic ‘Catholic’ President

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Robert Royal: You can carry rosary beads and bless yourself publicly as much as you want. But please, don’t expect Catholics to be blind.

In recent days, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago has described the pre-inauguration statement issued by USCCB President and Archbishop of Los Angeles José Gómez as “unprecedented” for what – in any non-partisan perspective – were actually quite temperate warnings to President Biden that the Church will not ignore his departures from clear Catholic teachings. In fact, the Chicago Cardinal has become rather obsessive, tweeting out what some have called a Twitter “storm” about the whole affair.

Cupich’s criticisms of his fellow bishops are themselves also quite unprecedented. Then again, the thing that’s most “unprecedented” – that’s given rise to these recent in-house Catholic squabbles – is the election of a self-described “Catholic” president, who not only believes personally that abortion, gay “marriage” (he performed one as vice-president), transgenderism (“the civil rights issue of our time”), and much more are matters of overriding political urgency, despite the long teachings of the Church and American history. He’s determined – actually seems to be going out of his way – to impose those views. On all of us.

But there’s even worse. As we’ll soon see – I hope to be wrong about this – he and the people he is appointing are poised not only aggressively to advance bad policies, but also to curtail religious liberties where they conflict with the tenets of the Alternative Creed that many Democrats – and not only them – have now embraced. It’s not only going to be the Little Sister of the Poor this time, though they will be back in court again soon. It’s Catholic (and other religious) adoption agencies, poverty programs, hospitals, schools, maybe even parishes or dioceses that are too starkly Catholic.

The Courts or a stray Democrat or so in Congress may stop some of the worst from happening. But that’s a slender hope with so much in play.

What’s truly unprecedented, then, beyond being an unfaithful Catholic, is that Biden has already shown himself by word and deed to be an anti-Catholic “Catholic.” Indeed, he’s an equal opportunity religious bigot who, for all the talk of coming together, will ride roughshod over his co-religionists as well as traditional Protestants and evangelicals, Orthodox and Conservative Jews, Muslims, Mormons, and even secular citizens who believe that “woke” politics do not abolish ordinary reason and human nature.

Biden has tried to position himself as a moderate and a man who wants to bring back American “unity.” In his inaugural address, however, he and his speechwriters told us exactly where they think the fault lines lie:

I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, and demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial.

In the unlikely event that you are a racist, hate foreigners, suffer from politically incorrect “phobias,” and – ahem, unlike liberals – demonize opponents, consider yourself forewarned. If, however, you think that by opposing certain policy choices you are yourself being demonized and marginalized by a political clique, well, you’ll just have to bear the stigma of being called bigoted and opposed to American “unity.”

Like Nancy Pelosi, who has said that some Catholics have placed their pro-life views “above democracy,” Biden has over the years talked himself into an alternative faith centered in partisan politics. A Catholic, indeed any sincere religious believer, should have no trouble saying – with the necessary qualifications – that of course he or she places God and his Word above any political order.

Any public figure who goes out of his way to make a display of his Catholicism should expect to receive scrutiny for his claim. Who knew that according to some Catholic Democrats the Constitution, for example, gives the Federal government the power to tell us which pronouns, family relationships, and “genders” can and cannot be used in conducting the business of the American people?

You can carry around rosary beads and bless yourself publicly as much as you want. But please, don’t expect Catholics to be blind. Or stupid. It’s not surprising when political partisans, religious or not, place their party and ambitions first, while masking it as an appeal to compassion and patriotism. But when a Catholic politician openly chooses to follow his wayward political party rather than his Church, lays out a whole set of policies that will negatively impact that Church, and immediately sets out to implement them, he’s seeking neither civic unity nor religious fidelity.

But let us also learn a lesson from this: we do not need to act like this ourselves. Christians aren’t in the world to cancel people; we’re here to convert them.  The nation is divided and needs to be evangelized. The alternative is civil war or secession. A nation divided in its ultimate commitments cannot resolve differences politically unless we open up space to live and let live. We can do that and still stand up – forcefully – for truth.

We won’t get that from the Biden administration. But we can prepare among ourselves a different mentality by the ways we think, speak, and act, now. It’s not an easy road. There are pitfalls everywhere. But God never said that his way would be easy.

Our bishops are shepherds, as well as public figures. They must teach, sanctify, and govern the flock as well as be public witnesses to the Truth. Gomez and the other bishops who joined him were right to express willingness to co-operate, even “dialogue” – however unlikely, given ideological hatreds – with the incoming administration. But they were even more right to make clear that (to borrow from St. Thomas More) they are America’s good servants, but God’s first.

That may seem unprecedented to some, but let’s hope it’s the first of many new precedents that will radically shift the understanding of faith in our public life.

COLUMN BY

Robert Royal

Dr. Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C., and currently serves as the St. John Henry Newman Visiting Chair in Catholic Studies at Thomas More College. His most recent books are Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

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EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

How Missouri became the first abortion-free state in the U.S.

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Grassroots action over decades has borne fruit.

Although the pro-life movement has faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision illegalizing abortion in the U.S., the movement continues to make legal and cultural gains.

This is one of the latest.

In July 2019, I wrote the blog “The Last Planned Parenthood Clinic in Missouri Again Evades Closure” about how the lone Planned Parenthood clinic in my home state of Missouri received multiple court-ordered reprieves from closure after the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) decided not to renew the facility’s license because of dozens of serious health and safety violations.

Public records showed numerous problems at the clinic, including unreported failed abortions, life threatening complications, an illegal abortion at 21 weeks, insufficient supervision of medical residents (students) performing abortions, and inaccurate medical records, among the many other violations.

Yet the St. Louis abortion clinic continued to get court-ordered reprieves.

But this month, Operation Rescue confirmed that now no abortions have been performed there for months.  Instead, all abortion appointments are now being referred to the Fairview Heights Planned Parenthood facility across the Mississippi River in Illinois.

How could this happen?

While Missouri has long been a strongly pro-life state with legislation like the 2019 “Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act” and many active pro-life organisations, Defenders of the Unborn president Mary Maschmeier, who has led a peaceful, prayerful and life-saving ministry outside the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic for many years, wrote an email also giving credit to the:

“ordinary citizens who would not take no for an answer. Who persevered day after day, year after year, decade after decade. Ever present on the front lines. In the streets. In the halls of our state legislature. Sidewalk counseling. Prayer warriors… Manning pregnancy aid centers. Staffing ultrasound vans. Rain, snow, heat, cold — ever vigilant.”

Mary also wrote,

“We will not stop until the that unjust practice is banished from our land and encourage our fellow citizens to end abortion in their respective states.”

Conclusion

In 1989, I had just started working as an RN on an oncology (cancer) unit when we discovered that one of our patients had CMV (Cytomegalovirus).

One of our nurses was pregnant and tested positive for the virus. Her doctor told her how her baby could die or have terrible birth defects from the virus, and he recommended an abortion.

“Sue” (not her real name) was frantic. She had two little girls and worked full-time. She said she didn’t know how she could manage a child with serious birth defects.

I told her that it was usually impossible to know if or how much a baby might be impaired before birth. I also told her about my Karen who was born with Down Syndrome and a critical heart defect and died at 5 months. I told her that I treasured the time I had with her and later babysat children with a range of physical and mental difficulties. Most importantly, I also told her that I would be there to help her and her baby.

“Sue” decided against abortion and told the other nurses what I said.

The other nurses were furious with me and said if the baby was born with so much as an extra toe, they would never talk to me again.

But slowly, the other nurses came around and also offered to help Sue and her baby.

In the end, we all celebrated when Sue had her first son, who was perfectly healthy!

My point is that what many people don’t understand is that pro-life doesn’t mean just being against abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. What being pro-life really means is truly caring about all lives, born or unborn.

The article has been republished with permission from Nancy Valko’s blog.

COLUMN BY

Nancy Valko

I have been a registered nurse since 1969 and currently I am a spokesperson for the National Association of Prolife Nurses (www.nursesforlife.org). I have also been a past President of Missouri Nurses… More by Nancy Valko.

RELATED ARTICLE: UK transgender treatment centre urged to speed up its controversial service

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Here are the states with the lowest levels of marijuana use among kids 12-17 years old

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Last week, we reported that 3.2 million 12- to 17-year-olds used marijuana in the past year, according to the new 2018-2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Of those, 39 percent live in the 15 recreational legalization states and the District of Columbia, while 61 percent live in the other 35 states.

We got curious about which states had the lowest levels of past-year marijuana use among kids. These states have one-fourth (26 percent) of young past-year marijuana users, while the uncolored states have three-fourths (61 percent) of them.

Curious about how many kids in your state used marijuana in the past year? Here’s how to find out. See Table C.10, which tells you the Population Estimate for the number of 12- to 17-year-olds who live in your state here.

Multiply that number by the percent of 12- to 17-year-olds in your state who used marijuana in the past year. You can find that number in Table 2 here.

DRUGGED DRIVING

Colorado drugged driving data

The DUID (Driving Under the Influence of Drugs) Victim Voices website has compiled and posted data from Colorado state agencies about the problem of DUID. Here are a few highlights:

  • 18.6 percent of past-month adult marijuana users admit to driving after marijuana use. The percent of high school marijuana users who admit this is an astonishing 54.4 percent.
  • Toxicology tests of those arrested for DUI show 4,205 positive screens for cannabinoids. Of those, 4,069 were positive for THC. Positive screens for alcohol were 3,956.
  • Yet 2018 DUI charges in the state were 75.3 percent for alcohol, 6.4 percent for THC.

For more Colorado DUID data, visit the website here.

More than half of people using cannabis for pain experience multiple withdrawal symptoms

Lara N. Coughlin and colleagues from the University of Michigan Addiction Center find that more than half of medical marijuana patients who take the drug to ease pain experience mild to severe withdrawal symptoms when they are between uses.

Marijuana withdrawal symptoms include craving for the drug, as well as “anxiety, sleep difficulties, decreased appetite, restlessness, depressed mood, aggression, irritability, nausea, sweating, headache, stomach pain, strange dreams, increased anger, and shakiness.”

The researchers surveyed 527 Michigan residents seeking medical marijuana for noncancer pain three times, once to establish a baseline and then one year and two years after patients’ initial survey. While more than half of patients experienced withdrawal symptoms, about 10 percent experienced worsening symptoms over time, making them vulnerable to developing a cannabis use disorder.

Read University of Michigan account of this study here.

Read Addiction abstract here.

Better data for a better understanding of the use and safety profile of cannabidiol (CBD) products

FDA Administrator Stephen M. Hahn, MD, issued an explanatory statement regarding the agency’s pursuit of a better understanding of the potential positive and negative effects of CBD. The statement describes the challenges involved in collecting and evaluating CBD data and points to a “framework for the FDA’s development of research projects that can leverage novel data sources and can form the foundation for additional research on the safety profile of CBD products.”
Read Dr. Hahn’s FDA statement here.

SAFETY

Colorado issues a health and safety warning about contaminated marijuana
The Colorado Department of Revenue and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued a warning last Friday about unsafe levels of yeast and mold found in marijuana produced by Carrick-Harvest, LLC. The company does business as Veritas Fine Cannabis. The yeast and mold levels are above acceptable limits established by the state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division. The warning lists batch numbers so that those who bought these items can return them to the dispensaries from which they bought them.

Read the state’s Health and Safety Advisory here.

Lack of standards, dubious business practices threaten to upend cannabis testing industry
Unethical business practices are undermining public confidence in marijuana products. Some producers “lab shop” to find a testing facility that will give them results they want to see in terms of THC levels (high) and contaminants (none). Others adulterate their products with spray-on marijuana oil or THC crystals to indicate a higher THC presence than exists.

Washington state regulators suspended the license of Praxis Laboratory for allegedly falsifying testing data on more than 1,200 samples by supplying higher THC levels than tests found.

One lab owner explains that it just takes time for a new industry to develop standards. “Give it another five to 15 years,” she says.

Read Marijuana Business Daily article here.

VAPING

Kids who vape are four times more likely to become cigarette smokers later in life

Researcher Olusegun Owotomo and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin analyzed data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study. They find that e-cigarette use is associated with increased odds of cigarette smoking among teenagers who had no previous intention to smoke. A 5-minute video by the lead researcher nicely explains the study and its findings.

Read full text of Pediatrics article and access the video here.

Chemicals in e-cigarettes disrupt the gut barrier and trigger inflammation

Aditi Sharma and colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in La Jolla, and Assiut University in Egypt find that chemicals in e-cigarettes disrupt the gut barrier and trigger inflammation.

They say chronic use of e-cigarettes “led to a ‘leaky gut,’ in which microbes and other molecules seep out of the intestines, resulting in chronic inflammation. Such inflammation can contribute to a variety of diseases and conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, dementia, certain cancers, atherosclerosis, liver fibrosis, diabetes, and arthritis.”

Read UCSD’s description of this complex study here.

Read full text of the study published in iScience here.

SHORT TAKES

California governor’s proposed 2021 budget includes funds to consolidate three state marijuana regulatory agencies into one.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s new budget contains funding to collapse the three state agencies that regulate legal recreational marijuana into one agency. Is it the State Department of Public Health? Sadly, no. Proposed is $153.8 million to create a Department of Cannabis Control within the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency. In other words, an agency to serve the needs of the commercial marijuana industry rather than the public’s health and well being.

Read last entry in the California Department of Food and Agriculture bulletin here.

Congress commands CDC, NIDA to study “the potential health impact of safe consumption sites.”
A bill tied to the stimulus package passed by Congress in December includes language that directs the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute on Drug Abuse to provide Congress with “an updated literature review and evaluation of the potential public-health impact of Overdose Prevention Centers in the US” by the end of June 2021.

“Safe consumption sites” provide medically pure addictive drugs and a place where addicts can consume them with medical personnel in-house to prevent or reverse overdose. There are none yet  in the US, although harm reduction advocates and the Drug Policy Alliance, which appears to be responsible for getting the language calling for a literature review into the stimulus bill, have been trying to establish one in Philadelphia.

Read Filter article here.

Head of SAMHSA resigns after attack on US Capitol

Elinore F. McCance-Katz, MD, PhD, resigned as the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use and director of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

She says she saw the violent takeover of the Capitol building. “I believe that this behavior was totally unacceptable and, in my own heart, I simply am not able to continue.”

She will be missed.

Read her resignation letter here.

EDITORS NOTE: This National Families in Action report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Is Biden Planning a ‘Covid Crisis’ Next Week When He Takes Power?

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We have repeatedly written that, while Covid is a health issue as are all viruses, it has become a political weapon to control all aspects of our lives. Next week on January 20th, Biden will be sworn in as President. It is interesting that one healthcare worker has reported that she was informed that there will be a Covid Crisis announced during the same week.

WATCH: How do they know there is going to be a crisis next week?

Amazon has posted on its website the idea that Covid is a Crisis. If you happen to own an Amazon Echo Show, you will be bombarded with Covid information. NPR has done a series titled “The Coronavirus Crisis” to stoke fear in America.

Remember what then Chief-of-Staff to president elect Barack Obama Rahm Emanuel, Wall Street Journal interview on November 19, 2008,

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste?”

In my column “Biden and Democrats Go Full Fascist – 2021 is ‘The Era of the Fake Crisis'” I wrote:

Joe Biden and the Democrats have learned one lesson very well. Never let a serious crisis go to waste, even though there is no serious crisis.

Since the election of President Donald J. Trump the Democrats have created, out of thin air, crisis after crisis. Crisis allows tyrants to seize power and implement draconian laws to suppress and crush their opposition. We are seeing this playing out today in 2021 by the Democrats and their leader Biden.

I fully expect Biden to use this fake Covid Crisis to pass legislation that will undermine the freedoms of the American people. Biden will use Covid to fund his draconian programs as part of a bill that gives Americans some sort of a check. What we the people don’t understand is that this check will be used as a ruse to take away our lives, liberties and our abilities to pursue happiness.

The Covid Crisis will be used to foment the big lie that only government can save you. It will create fear, chaos and panic. This big lie will be spread by the legacy media and the truth censored by the social media platforms.

The year 2021 will go down in history as the beginning of the Democrat Party going full Fascist.

RELATED ARTICLE: Capitol Riot Further Exposes Democrat Hypocrisy

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz: Left using ‘national security authorities’ to target Trump backers

Takeout Only | How California Elites Crushed LA’s Local Restaurants

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It was a dark winter for most small business owners across America, but Los Angeles County in particular was decimated by draconian lockdown measures right before the holidays. The county shut down both indoor and outdoor dining as of Nov. 25, allowing restaurants to only use takeout to feed their customers.

The Daily Caller’s Jorge Ventura traveled across the county talking to restaurant owners who are barely able to keep their lights on. The documentary tracks the gradual escalation of lockdown measures and their impact on small businesses. We also shed light on California’s bureaucrats breaking their lockdown measures, and their apparent indifference to those suffering under policies they imposed.

Los Angeles County put a ban on outdoor dining the week of Thanksgiving impacting 30,000 restaurants in the county. More than 110,000 restaurants across the country are set to close permanently or long-term, according to the National Restaurant Association. California was the first state in March to issue a state wide stay-at-home order and since then restaurants have had to adjust to some of the strictest COVID-19 restrictions in the country.

“We were expecting a lot of sports and revenue to come in but that all shut down” Dave Foldes, the owner of Cronies Sports Grill in Southern California said about the state wide stay-at-home order issued in March. “We were limited to just takeout and delivery and our business does not do well with that is a very small part of our business.”

Foldes has decided to defy the outdoor dining ban and has continued to serve his customers. According to Foldes, he has been fined $500 everyday to defy the outdoor dining ban by LA County Public Health. “This whole thing started because the last we’re going to do is lay people off during the Christmas holiday” said Foldes on why he decided to defy the county’s orders that ban restaurants, bars and breweries from serving outdoors. “I can’t see laying them off, they need money for the holidays.”

The ban on outdoor dining has forced many restaurants and breweries like Ravens Nest and Bravery Brewing in LA County to layoff employees during the holidays as they adjust to takeout-only service. “Furloughing our staff, pivoting and for the first time in our company’s history having to find a way to discount our beer so we can through all of it in a timely fashion.”

WATCH:

COLUMN BY

JORGE VENTURA

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Lockdowns: An Abortion Argument

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David G. Bonagura, Jr.: COVID restrictions have exposed the privacy/liberty “right” to abort as what’s it always been: an arbitrary government edict.

The irony is sickening. For decades we have heard the shrieks in defense of abortion and birth control: “Keep the government out of my uterus!” “My body, my choice!” “No woman can call herself free,” said Margaret Sanger, “who does not control her own body.”

Democratic politicians have long supported abortion with this line of reasoning. Most recently, in signing the Reproductive Health Act into law in 2019, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo declared that “women in New York will always have the fundamental right to control their own body.” Out West, seeking codification of Roe v. Wade into the laws of California, Oregon, and Washington, Governors Newsom, Brown, and Inslee, in a joint letter, defined “reproductive choice” as “the right to make private decisions about one’s body,” and asserted that to intrude upon that choice “is a fundamental violation of individual liberty and freedom.”

Flash forward to 2020. These same governors have imposed the most restrictive measures in the nation to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Suddenly, the right to control one’s own body is no longer sacrosanct; individual liberty, touted so righteously just a year earlier, must now be curbed. These governors, along with others, have ordered their citizens to mask their faces, to limit the number of people in their homes, not to worship God in churches, not to exercise their bodies in gyms. In short, they have swiftly and systematically deprived their citizens of the very same “fundamental right to control their own bod[ies]” that they celebrate under another banner.

How far will this encroachment go? In New York, the governor decreed that food must be served in order to purchase alcohol. When one bar started offering “Cuomo Chips” as the plat du jour, the governor countered by mandating that “a substantial amount of food” must go into one’s body to drink alcohol.

Then, in October, New York released its “Mirco-Cluster Strategy” that sets thresholds at which schools must issue mandatory COVID tests to students. In essence, the government is forcing school personnel to poke into the bodies of minors, without their parents’ present. If parents object to testing their kids, the students are barred from attending school.

How can these “champions” of the right to control one’s body justify their blatant hypocrisy?

“COVID is a different matter,” they would surely say in reply. “We are protecting public health. With these measures we are saving lives.”

So we ask: in order to be consistent, shouldn’t the government ban abortion, if saving lives is so important?

We would then hear a sermon asserting women’s right to privacy, since abortion supporters must quickly shift the conversation away from the humanity of the child in utero. Advocating killing is seldom a winning argument. So they change the topic, masking abortion’s grim reality with the rhetoric of freedom, choice, and privacy.

Which returns the governors to their dilemma: How can the choice to have an abortion be protected under the penumbras of privacy but the choice of who comes over for Thanksgiving and Christmas be restricted for reasons of public health?

The governors, though, have lined up for yet another merry-go round ride. “If we don’t act now we’ll continue to see our death rate climb,” said Governor Newsom. Preventing the death of children in utero, it seems by extension, is not state interest. The message is clear: a government purportedly so concerned with saving lives has decided that only some lives are worth saving.

The severity and swiftness with which these governors have imposed COVID restrictions expose just how specious the abortion argument is. Its legality hinges entirely on an act of raw government power. We knew this in the past, but now, thanks to COVID, we feel it on our faces and up our noses. The government cannot with a straight face say that women can control their bodies when it comes to abortion, but not when it comes to going to school.

Abortion has never been about privacy or liberty. Unlike COVID prescriptions, outlawing abortion requires no intrusion into women’s lives or bodies, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary. In fact, abortion prevents the normal and healthy process of pregnancy from continuing – an odd choice when we are told that health is the government’s top priority. In fact, abortion is about ensuring that the sexual revolution has no consequences, and for this the government has declared it a compelling state interest.

To assert a “right to control one’s body” where it does not exist, as Roe did in legalizing abortion, is a lie. To continue to defend abortion on these same grounds while intruding into private homes and into the bodies of citizens to stop the pandemic transforms a lie into hypocrisy. “But COVID is different!” – is no defense at all. If the government wants to suspend livelihoods and poke into bodies to protect life, it has no choice but to protect all life, from womb to tomb.

The discussion now has to shift back to the humanity of the child in utero, where the governors and abortion supporters do not want to go. The “right to control one’s body” on the grounds of privacy and personal liberty argument has been exposed as an arbitrary government edict. We can then turn to science, which the governors claim to honor, but regularly flout, to finish the discussion, since science shows that a new human life begins at conception and is, therefore, unequivocally on the pro-life side.

COLUMN BY

David G Bonagura, Jr.

David G. Bonagura Jr. teaches at St. Joseph’s Seminary, New York. He is the author of Steadfast in Faith: Catholicism and the Challenges of Secularism (Cluny Media).

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

PODCAST: Biden Estimated 250,000 COVID Deaths This Month. He Was Off By 178,000!

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GUESTS AND TOPICS:

JEFF CROUERE

Jeff Crouere is the host of, “Ringside Politics,” which airs weekdays on WGSO 990-AM in New Orleans. He is a political columnist, the author of America’s Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on www.JeffCrouere.com.

TOPIC: OH BROTHER, NANCY PELOSI IS INSANE!

GEORGE PARRY

George Parry is a Contributor to The American Spectator, The Federalist, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. George is a former federal and state prosecutor. George served as: Special Attorney for the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, U.S. Department of Justice ; Unit Chief, Investigations Division, Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office ; Special Organized Crime Prosecutor, Blair and Cambria counties (central Pennsylvania) ; and a Legal Analyst for KYW-TV in Philadelphia.

TOPIC: Beware of the Thing That Is Coming!

TRISTAN JUSTICE

Tristan Justice is a staff writer at The Federalist focusing on the 2020 presidential campaigns. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism.

TOPIC: Biden Estimated 250,000 COVID Deaths This Month. He Was Off By 178,000!

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Why the Real Villain of 2020 Was Big Government

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COVID-19 was going to be bad, no matter what. But the failures of big government made it much, much worse.

The disaster that was 2020 is finally over. Now it’s time for the inevitable post-mortems.

First and foremost, the COVID-19 pandemic posed enormous challenges to American institutions, and continues to do so. Frankly, we were not prepared. We need to diagnose what went wrong, so that we are never caught unaware like this again. Fortunately, the diagnosis is straightforward. COVID-19 was going to be bad, no matter what. But the failures of big government made it much, much worse.

In particular, the Centers for Disease Control, Food and Drug Administration, and public teachers’ unions are the great American villains of 2020. Meanwhile, the heroes of this year are almost entirely in the private sector. From Zoom to vaccine development, Big Pharma and Big Tech—yes, you read that right—made this horrible year bearable. Even amid a crisis that led so many to cry out for vigorous government action, we saw that private markets still work best.

For progressives and so-called “national” conservatives who support big government, 2020 represented the ultimate test for their philosophies. Although they disagree on cultural issues, they see eye-to-eye on the role of government. Both want a big, energetic state promoting what (they believe to be) the good of the nation. Well, here was their chance for the government to shine.

The result was shameful failure. The COVID-19 crisis put left-wing and right-wing statism on trial—and both were found guilty of ill-intent and gross incompetence.

After all, the CDC is the reason America lagged behind other nations for so long in terms of COVID-19 testing. We had the virus genome fully mapped in January, which enabled the rapid production of private testing kits. But the CDC forced these operations to shut down, coming up with its own test—which was flawed, and even contaminated! Testing and tracing could have stemmed the worst of the COVID-19 tide.

On this issue alone, CDC ineptitude is likely responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Its red tape and incompetence made containing the COVID-19 pandemic, like a few other countries were able to, impossible.

How about the FDA?

It is no secret that the vaccine was delayed because it needed FDA approval. Indeed, several working vaccines could have come much earlier, were it not for our bungling bureaucrat gatekeepers. (Dear FDA: Can you please speed things up a little, so people do not, you know, die? It would make us ever so happy if you did. Thanks.)

As for schools, the data show that young people and children are at very low-risk from COVID-19, and that schools are not “super spreaders.” Despite this, largely due to pressure from public teachers’ unions, many schools remained closed in the fall. In fact, the US was pretty much the only country to pursue the alarmist policy of keeping schools closed.

The toll on school-aged children is immense, from psychological trauma to impeded learning. Low-income families were hit especially hard. They often lacked the means to participate in distance learning, and having their kids at home made it harder for parents to earn much-needed income.

Fortunately, there seems to be some well-deserved backlash against the crony public education establishment. Hopefully a mass exodus to more effective and accountable learning platforms will follow, whether that is charter schools, private schools, or homeschooling. Even more hopefully, parents will realize public education racketeers are not their friends. They should demand loud and clear: Fund students, not systems!

In stark contrast to these unacceptable failures by government agencies and employees, the private sector delivered.

Big Pharma and Big Tech are the winners here. Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and many other companies did amazing work getting the vaccines developed as quickly as they did. Public health “experts” repeatedly claimed a vaccine would not be available for 18 months, at the earliest. (Shows what they know!)

As for Big Tech, companies like Facebook and Twitter helped us stay connected while we were forced physically to remain apart. Amazon responded well to a huge surge in demand, stemming from the curtailment of in-person shopping. Faced with an immense logistical challenge, the online retailer surpassed expectations.

These sectors and their star performers are not perfect, of course.

In the past, Big Pharma lobbied for many of the regulatory roadblocks that made fighting COVID-19 so hard. Big Tech got egg on its face for covering up the Hunter Biden laptop story. Nevertheless, the takeaway is clear: 2020 would have been much, much more miserable without these supposedly evil big businesses in our corner. We owe them far more than we give them.

2021 is the perfect time to revisit our basic beliefs about the role of government and business in society. Both were unexpectedly challenged by the greatest public health crisis in recent memory.

Government failed. Business triumphed. Statism should be discredited, hopefully for an entire generation. Any coherent political philosophy for the 21st century must start from this basic truth.

COLUMN BY

Alexander William Salter

Alexander William Salter is an associate professor of economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University, the Comparative Economics Research Fellow at TTU’s Free Market Institute, and a senior fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research’s Sound Money Project. Follow him on Twitter @alexwsalter.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘Growing Body of Evidence’ Shows COVID-19 Leaked from Chinese Lab: U.S. Official

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And this is news. Always known. The only ones denying it was the ChiCom-supported Democrat media complex.

‘Growing body of evidence’ shows COVID-19 leaked from Chinese lab: US official

By Sara Dorn. The NY Post, January 2, 2021 |

U.S. National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger is doubling down on the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese government-run lab in Wuhan.

Pottinger, a staunch critic of Beijing, allegedly made the claim in a recent Zoom meeting with British officials.

“There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus,” Pottinger reportedly said, according to the Daily Mail.

The Trump appointee pushed the theory as the European Union made a new investment deal with China last week over protests from Pottinger and hesitance from the incoming Biden administration.

Pottinger, one of the first U.S. officials to raise alarms inside White House walls about the origins of the virus back in January 2020, has reportedly suspected since the early days of the outbreak that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab.

He ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to search for evidence that it had, the New York Times reported in April.

A Chinese virologist who said she did some of the earliest research on COVID-19 has publicly claimed COVID-19 was man-made, and that the Chinese government covered up its dangers. Western medical experts have discredited the theory.
see also

Wuhan ‘bat woman’ open to inspection to prove COVID did not originate in lab

The World Health Organization has been investigating the source of the virus since the first case was made public in January 2020. Patient Zero has not been found.

Pottinger suggested in the recent call with British officials that the WHO probe is a ruse.

“MPs around the world have a moral role to play in exposing the WHO investigation as a Potemkin exercise,” Pottinger told the parliamentarians, referring to fake villages created in Crimea in the 18th Century to convince the visiting Russian Empress Catherine the Great that the region was in good health.

“Even establishment figures in Beijing have openly dismissed the wet market story,” Pottinger allegedly said, referring to another theory that the virus was transmitted from animals to humans inside a wildlife market in Wuhan where the first cluster of cases emerged.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Governor Noem Says South Dakota Has ‘Perhaps The Strongest Economy’ in Country After Refusing Lockdowns

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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s response to the global pandemic has been superb. She rightfully refused to shut down her state despite ridicule from the Left. Today, South Dakota’s economy is red hot. As such, American’s are moving to South Dakota in droves. Like Governor DeSantis, Governor Noem will be a force in the 2024 Republican primaries.

Governor Says South Dakota Has “Perhaps The Strongest Economy” in Country After Refusing Lockdowns

By: Dan Bongino Show, January 1, 2020

Despite the fact that lockdowns do enormous amounts of economic damage, they’ve proven to be almost completely ineffective at stopping the coronavirus.

One of the governors that understood this early on was South Dakota’s Kristi Noem. Noem was savagely criticized by liberals that pointed to the tiny state’s high rate of infection as evidence that she needed to shut everything down. However the state has only had a grand total of 1488 coronavirus-related deaths and yesterday, they had a mere 444 new cases. Meanwhile, unlike many liberal states that aggressively shut down their businesses, South Dakota’s economy hasn’t been decimated this year.

The national unemployment rate is 6.7% and states like New York and California that have heavily relied on lockdowns to control the coronavirus have unemployment rates over 8%. As you may have heard, people and businesses are fleeing both of those states. So, how is South Dakota doing on that front? It looks like they’re doing pretty well.

How much of the economic misery we’ve seen this year was caused by the coronavirus and how much of it was actually caused by the overreaction of state governments to the coronavirus? South Dakota’s experience suggests most of the economic damage we saw this year was self-inflicted. That doesn’t mean the coronavirus isn’t serious and it doesn’t mean that we all shouldn’t take steps to avoid getting it. However, is it worth economically crushing a lot of small businesses and impoverishing so many people for lockdowns that don’t even seem to work? Some of us were asking that question months ago and South Dakota’s experience seems to suggest that we were on the right track.

RELATED ARTICLE: BREAKING: Three Arrested for Brutal Beating and Torture of Former GOP Senate Candidate

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.