Bed Bugs have become such a problem in Ohio — as CEI noted earlier this week – that the state is now using Medicaid funds to cover the costs of extermination and control in senior citizen homes, according to a news report today. It’s a tragedy that senior citizens—or anyone–are suffering the ravages of these pests, which carry no disease but still cause itchy, uncomfortable bites after they feed on people at night. And the creepy reality of bugs creates considerable psychological stress that should not be consider a “minor” problem.
Much of this problem stems from our overly stringent pesticide law – the Food Quality Protection Act – which has produced a host of bans on safe and effective products that could be used to control a growing band of annoying to dangerous pests. Unfortunately, this is the model that activists are pushing for revisions to the Toxic Substances Control Act, which could remove a host of other safe and valuable products on the market. It would be unwise for members of the new Congress to venture down that dangerous path. Instead, they should reform the pesticide law to make it more rational.
Image credit: Texas A&M Center for Urban and Structural Entomology.
It is illegal to buy more than 288 bottles of wine per year in Ohio.
If you drink that much wine by yourself, then you have more important problems to worry about than regulatory compliance. But if you host of lot of parties or are building up a wine collection, you run a real risk of hitting the limit.
“The level was set to establish what would seem to be a reasonable amount for personal use,” according to the Ohio Wine Producers Association’s executive director, Donniella Winchell.
Since the law is somewhat difficult to enforce, no violators have yet been found. But when there are, the Ohio Department of Public Safety Investigative Unit will come knocking. Because while buying 288 bottles of wine is perfectly fine, buying 289 poses a threat to public safety.
(Hat tip to CEI colleague Megan McLaughlin)
Kahlua contains 20% alcohol in 49 states. But in Ohio, it is 21.5%. Weird, huh?
Turns out regulations are the reason. My friend Jacob Grier pointed me to an article showing that Ohio groups alcoholic beverages into two categories: wine/beer and spirits. Any beverage below 20% alcohol is in the wine/beer category and can be sold in grocery stores. Anything above 20% is classed as a spirit and can only be sold in state-run liquor stores.
Drinkers often mix Kahlua with spirits such as vodka. So the company actually changed its recipe in Ohio to ensure that Kahlua would appear in stores next to its complementary products. The benefit to consumers from this regulatory scheme is unclear.
Are you thinking of getting one of those cool new “fish pedicures” in which two-inch-long carp nibble dead skin off your toes and feet? Well, you’d better act fast. Many states are considering a ban on the process. And an article in this morning’s Wall Street Journal (sorry, may be for subscribers only) explains that 14 states have now already banned it or found that the process violates an existing cosmetology or other public health rule.
Indeed, the introduction of fish pedicures in the United States was almost stillborn after Vietnamese immigrant John Ho imported the technique and thousands of fish from China. Ho, who is believed to be the first to use the technique in the U.S., was almost thwarted by the Fairfax County Virginia Health Department, which decided that a communal tub shared by the feet of several customers at once was a “public swimming pool” and that the fish made it unsanitary. A switch to individual tubs was enough to make it lawful in Virginia.
And, in other good news, Ohio has made an affirmative decision that the process is OK. In a fit of rationality that often seems unusual for state public health officials, the Ohio Board of Cosmetology decided the practice was sanitary enough. As the Journal explains:
[O]phthalmologist Marilyn Huheey, who sits on the Ohio State Board of Cosmetology, decided to try it out for herself in a Columbus salon last fall. After watching the fish lazily munch on her skin, she recommended approval to the board. “It seemed to me it was very sanitary, not sterile of course,” Dr. Huheey says. “Sanitation is what we’ve got to live with in this world, not sterility.”
Would that all governments recognized what seems so obvious.
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