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The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is pleased to announce the publication of the 4th edition of the Tobacco and Vaping 50 State Analysis. The analysis examines data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) adult-focused Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey (BRFSS), as well as the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). Each year, the CDC’s BRFSS surveys U.S. adults aged 18 years or older on various health determinants, including smoking rates. TPA’s Tobacco and Vaping 50 State Analysis examines those numbers, including smoking rates among various age groups and ethnicities, as well as the impacts of tobacco control policies (such as excise taxes) on reducing smoking rates. This year’s analysis also provides insight on the adults who are currently using e-cigarettes. Lindsey Stroud and the harm reduction team put so much time and hard work into this project to cut through the lies that politicians and bureaucrats try to spread about vaping and tobacco harm reduction. Check out what’s happening in your state.
Age Verification Legislation
Last fall, Gov. Ron DeSantis thrashed Nikki Haley’s proposal to disallow Americans from using social media anonymously — and for good reason. “Haley’s proposal to ban anonymous speech online…is dangerous and unconstitutional,” DeSantis posted on X (formerly Twitter). The governor reminded Haley that the First Amendment unequivocally protects Americans’ right to speak anonymously, noting that America’s free-speech tradition includes the then-unidentified “Publius,” the pseudonym under which Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay penned the Federalist Papers. Florida’s H.B. 1 would require social media platforms to verify users’ age and forbid minors younger than 16 from using social media. This proposal would violate the First Amendment rights of both children and adults. Despite being undoubtedly well-intentioned, neither of these major provisions would survive a legal challenge. To use social media (i.e., to speak online), users of all ages must submit to H.B. 1’s age verification mandate. Floridians understand the profound threat to constitutional rights that purportedly benevolent regimes pose. They should view such proposals as applied to the digital world with no less skepticism. Required age verification forces users to provide sensitive personal information to online platforms or (as H.B. 1 provides for) to third-party verification services. This allows them to amass treasure troves of data, ripe for hacking. Besides such security risks, age verification establishes a data trail that greatly helps anybody who wishes to identify would-be-anonymous users, even with optimal data governance. Despite advocates’ increasingly feeble objections, the fact remains that mandated online verification regimes are, to one degree or another, de facto bans on online anonymity.
H.B. 1’s blanket proposal to ban children 16-years-old or younger from social media won’t withstand First Amendment scrutiny. As a constitutional matter, minors receive more limited rights than adults, yet they nonetheless enjoy substantial protections. Barring all under-16s categorically from social media — irrespective of individuals’ maturity, interests, social environment, and preexisting psychological state — bars them also from accessing benign or beneficial online content. And that content is (as a legal matter) constitutionally protected speech. Moreover, unlike liquor stores, nightclubs, smut shops, and other “adult” establishments that exclude minors, social media provides many children (particularly older children, properly supervised by their parents) access to valuable educational and social opportunities. Through H.B. 1, government would preempt parents’ broad right — and duty — to determine what content their child views or does not view. Children’s varying personality traits and circumstances will suit them to various types of media, both online and offline. Parents, not regulators, understand their children best. Parents, not the state, should retain the primary responsibility for their children’s online upbringing.
Social media platforms already have online tools that allow parents to control, limit, and monitor their children’s social media use. Public officials (through public statements) and schools (through online literacy and safety courses) should promote such tools. Too many parents have neglected their responsibility to protect their children as carefully in the digital world as they would in the physical one. Officials at the bully pulpit could do much good to ameliorate this. However, prudence dictates that not every parental failure requires a regulatory intervention. Nearly one in five American children is obese, yet most Americans would recoil at the thought of state-prescribed family meal plans. H.B. 1 would be bad for parents and children. It would blatantly violate the Constitution’s clear boundaries. Attempting to reverse America’s traditional respect for anonymous speakers and parental rights would neither escape a judicial injunction nor effect the noble goal of safeguarding children. The Florida legislature should take note of DeSantis’s legally and prudentially sound arguments — and give the whole idea up.
Dishwater Rule Goes Down the Drain
Efficient, powerful, effective, and thorough — all adjectives that describe accurately the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent evisceration of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) new policy on dishwashers and laundry machines. Those adjectives do not describe the shoddy home appliances the agency attempted to impose on the American citizenry. Nor can they be applied to the DOE’s manifestly deficient reasoning, which, according to the appeals court, produced an “arbitrary and capricious” (and therefore legally impermissible) regulatory result. Pursuant to President Joe Biden’s whole-of-government approach to environmentalist policy making, Washington bureaucrats have worked strenuously to heighten energy- and water-consumption requirements for many home appliances. Abundant examples include gas stoves, lightbulbs, shower heads, refrigerators, freezers, and air conditioners. In one skirmish along this extended front — now the object of the 5th Circuit’s opprobrium — Biden’s DOE revoked Trump-era rules exempting fast-working dishwashers and laundry machines from stringent, anti-consumer requirements.
Somewhat counterintuitively, closer scrutiny suggests that faster and more-powerful appliances on net conserve electricity and water. A weak dishwasher, although apparently more efficient, could require users to run multiple cycles to clean some dishes fully, resulting in a cumulative waste of resources. Similarly, interminable cycle times encourage users to completely give up appliances and wash by hand. As Judge Andrew Oldham wrote for the 5th Circuit, “nothing wastes water and energy like handwashing: DOE itself estimated in 2011 that handwashing consumes 350 percent more water and 140 percent more energy than machine washing.” The DOE has largely disregarded these benefits; it has instead chosen policies that at first glance seem environmentally friendly over those that would in practice conserve resources. Human behavior is less malleable than regulatory codes — to would-be technocrats’ chagrin. Noting that the agency’s policies (“efficiency” mandates) likely do not promote its stated policy goal (conservationism), Oldham asked, “What did DOE say in response? Basically nothing: It acknowledged the concern and moved on. But bare acknowledgment is no substitute for reasoned consideration.” Although regulators cited contrary evidence suggesting some environmental advantages to more stringent standards, he continued, it “implicitly credited [that contrary evidence] without explaining why. That is the touchstone of arbitrary and capricious agency action.” But the 5th Circuit went further than the “arbitrary and capricious” finding necessary to curb the DOE’s rule repeal. Oldham argued that the agency likely lacks statutory authority to regulate water efficiency standards entirely. The plain language of the relevant law (the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, as updated in 1992), seems only to delegate such authorities only with respect to showerheads, faucets, water closets, and urinals.
America is a nation predicated on the notion that government (and government officials) may exercise only such powers as the Constitution and duly enacted law vest in them. And although the government’s powers are no longer “few and defined” as the Constitution prescribes, and the administrative state exercises progressively greater and more-concentrated powers, court rulings such as the 5th Circuit’s go far to restore constitutional and legal order. The nation, and individual citizens, are better off for them.
BLOGS:
Media:
January 19, 2024: I appeared on 55KRC Radio (Cincinnati, Ohio) to talk about age verification laws and government spending.
January 22, 2024: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about Maryland’s Digital Advertising Tax.
January 22, 2024: The Daily Independent ran TPA’s op-ed, "BEAD distribution should concern taxpayers.”
January 22, 2024: Yahoo! Finance quoted TPA in "WHO/FCTC Needs to Respect Science, Consumer Rights in COP Meeting."
January 23, 2024: I appeared on Newstalk 98.9 FM (Memphis, Tenn.) to talk about CFPB Mission Creep.
January 23, 2024: RealClearMarkets ran TPA’s op-ed, “The Contradictions Within President Biden's Antitrust Agenda.”
January 24, 2024: Florida Daily ran TPA’s op-ed, “Florida’s Bill to Mandate Online Age Verification Would Be a Constitutional Disaster.”
January 24, 2024: The Daily Caller ran TPA’s op-ed, “Court Eviscerates Biden Admin’s Goofy Dishwasher Rule.”
January 24, 2024: I appeared on KPEL 96.5 FM (Lafayette, La.) to talk about CFPB Mission Creep.
January 24, 2024: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) quoted TPA in their article, “City's website redesign contract draws criticism for $1M cost increase, ethical concerns.”
January 24, 2024: Legal Newsline quoted TPA in their article, “Taxpayers Protection Alliance President: Mass tort litigation costs are 'borne by the public at large in the form of inflated prices’.”
January 24, 2024: WJLA ABC7 (Washington, D.C.) quoted TPA in their story, “Coalition argues proposed sports arena in Potomac Yard will not boost local economy.”
January 24, 2024: Patrick Hedger was interviewed by Faune Riggin on KZIM (Cape Gireadau, MO) about the launch of TPA’s CFPB Mission Creep.
January 25, 2024: I appeared on NewsRadio 1110 KFAB (Omaha, Nebraska.) to talk about CFPB Mission Creep.
January 25, 2024: I appeared on WBOB 600 AM (Jacksonville, Fla.) to talk about age verification and the stock market.
January 25, 2024: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about new housing legislation signed by Mayor Scott.
January 25, 2024: National Review ran TPA’s op-ed, “The Right Way to Protect Children Online.”
January 25, 2024: The Washington Examiner (Washington, D.C.) ran TPA’s op-ed, “The Labor Department wants to decide how and when you work.”
January 25, 2024: Martin Cullip was quoted in the press release “WHO’s ‘anti-scientific’ stance blamed for global rise in smoking rates,” which was aggregated by more than 90 outlets including in Albemarle, NC; Brentwood, TN; Norfolk, VA; Sandy, UT; and Del Mar, CA
January 25, 2025: Patrick Hedger was quoted by Richmond.com in the article "Monumental Opportunity or Big Bust? Alexandria Ground Zero of Arena Debate."
Have a great weekend!
Best,
David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
1101 14th Street, NW
Suite 1120
Washington, D.C. xxxxxx
www.protectingtaxpayers.org
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