Trevor Hughes, - USA Today
Stephan: The big question of course is: as marijuana becomes legal will the historical essentially boutique marijuana growing model be subsumed into Big Tobacco. Here, in this report, I think is a pretty take on where we currently stand about this.
Credit: www.arktimes.com
DENVER — While federal law makes their entire industry illegal, many marijuana store owners, growers and retailers fear something completely different: Big Tobacco.
Today, most legal recreational marijuana operations are small, limited to a single state and barred from ever getting large by regulators who want to keep a close eye on the fast-growing industry. But those small operators struggle to get bank loans for expansion, often produce an inconsistent product and sometimes have no idea how to balance supply and demand for their crops.
And many fear that tobacco companies, with their deep pockets, longstanding experience dealing with heavy government regulation, and relationships with generations of farmers will jump into the burgeoning marijuana market. At marijuana business conventions and in private conversations, it sometimes seems like everyone has heard a rumor about Big Tobacco getting in.
“I think there’s a ton of paranoia that they’re buying up warehouses and signing secret deals,” said Chris Walsh, the editor of Marijuana Business Daily, an industry publication.
It’s not just paranoia: Tobacco companies for generations have talked privately about […]
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Stephanie Hanes, Correspondent - The Christian Science Monitor
Stephan: Beneath all the cant and smarmy self-congratulation the truth is America is not a very family or child friendly society. It now takes two incomes to keep many families in the middle class, and our support network to help support those families is a rotted net of degraded programs, not easily available, and often exorbitantly expensive. This report paints the picture. Entrepreneurial millennials however, as the report also lays out, are trying to patch some of the holes.
Credit: The Christian Science Monitor
CHICAGO — Toward the end of one recent workday, with many of the city’s commuters already on their way home, Vanessa Smith climbed the stairs to the loft-like expanse of Free Range Office, one of Chicago’s newest co-working spaces, where entrepreneurs and freelancers rent desks and network with other independent professionals.
With one hand holding on to her 3-year-old daughter, Michaela, and the other pressing a phone to her ear, Ms. Smith walked directly toward the conference room and into an experiment in child care. Instead of conference tables or smart boards, the room had everything for the under-5 set – stuffed animals and blocks, mats, and a “Frozen” picture book, even a children’s yoga instructor. And without dropping her business call, Smith waved to her daughter and retreated, with a bit of relief, back into the “grown-up” space of Free Range Office.
“This is just great,” Smith said after her call. A lawyer by training, Smith runs her own human resources consulting firm. She is also […]
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Saturday, April 11th, 2015
Stephan: This is what happens when industries take over and own the regulatory agencies that are supposed to oversee them. It is also what happens when wellness is not a consideration in the business model used.
Anyone who bothers to look at the superbug issue and the collapse of antibiotic medicine knows what is going on. Maybe we are just too weak or stupid to make choices that will allow our culture to survive.
Grossly overcrowded cattle must be dosed with increasing amounts of antibiotics in order to overcoming their poor living conditions.
Credit: Shutterstock
The meat industry is buying up more and more medically important antibiotics, threatening human health in its quest to ramp up the factory farm model to meet the demand for pork, chicken and beef.
New FDA
data shows that sales of human antibiotics for use in livestock jumped 20 percent between 2009 and 2013, in keeping with
past trends.
It’s in keeping, too, with projections for global antibiotic use by the meat sector, which experts say could increase by as much as 67 percent by 2030. It’s a problem, because industry abuse of the drugs is understood to contribute to the antibiotic resistance crisis — superbugs formed on the feedlot are capable of spreading to human populations.
The FDA cautions that its data is from 2013, before its new, voluntary […]
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Saturday, April 11th, 2015
Kent Sepkowitz , - The Daily Beast
Stephan: More on the debasement of food safety. These tragedies are almost completely avoidable if the political will is there to properly fund regulatory agencies that are committed to real oversight. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case in the U.S..
Humus
Credit: Shutterstock
This week, Sabra’s “classic hummus” may have joined several Blue Bell ice cream products on the do-not-eat list. Both foods are contaminated with the sometimes-lethal infection bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. At least three people in the Midwest have died after eating Blue Bell products. Thus far, there are no known clinical cases related to Sabra, which reportedly recalled its products under an abundance of caution.
These foods join an ever-expanding list of foods and companies that inadvertently have served up bad food. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) keeps a running tally of the various Listeria outbreaks recording a few per year with products ranging from sprouts to cheeses to cold cuts to who-knows-what.
(For those looking for a new type of diet, they also maintain an active log of food-borne outbreaks from Salmonella and “selected” E. coli outbreaks. You may never eat anything again—unless you boil the literal shit right out of it).
As the above suggests, Listeria is similar […]
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Saturday, April 11th, 2015
Diana Divecha and Robin Stern, developmental psychologist - research affiliate and associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. - Time
Stephan: We have 17 million kids who have hunger issues. 2.5 million of them last year had periods of homelessness. Our once vaunted public schools are in shambles. We are failing our kids and, thus, we are failing our society's future. Here is a report from the trail to tomorrow.
The kids are not alright
Why does it matter how kids feel during the school day? A child’s day is a roller coaster of emotions. And sadly, many of the feelings are unpleasant.
A growing body of research highlights the importance of how kids feel and how they manage those feelings, or not. Emotions drive attention, learning, memory, and decision-making. They affect relationships and psychological well-being. Learning to handle emotions well is especially important in adolescence, a time […]
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