Short takes

[magid]

The MA House has approved a bill to ban smoking in bars and restaurants statewide as of July 5. Now it goes on to the Senate, and Romney has already said he'd sign if it gets to his desk. I find it interesting that the state is so quickly following Boston (and Cambridge, but they were after Boston).

There was an ad in this month's Hadassah magazine offering discounts on certain prescription drugs shipped to you directly from... Israel. Interesting.

I hear the term "revolving president" and keep thinking that he'd be perfect in a museum-go-round. Or is that what his presidential library would be like?

There's an annual Booker prize, which can only go to the author of a novel written in English by a citizen of a current or former Commonwealth country. Now the same group (the UK National Book League) is starting a prize for international fiction, for any book written in or widely translated into English. Interesting.

There's a new mural on the movie theater on Church St. in Harvard Square. It has a number of movie characters, including some non-human ones, and to me doesn't quite fit in with the others that are already there, but some of that is just getting used to the new, I think.

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

Is it just going to be bars and restaurants? Doesn't Boston (and Cambridge?) have it at any place of work?

[magid.livejournal.com]

I don't know, though my impression is that office and store-type workplaces might have separate regulations that they'd be covered by.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

There are signs posted all over the place here at BU noting that smoking in public buildings is prohibited by law. fwiw.

[queue.livejournal.com]

I believe that's because Boston has the regulation about not having any smoking in any workplace, which would include everything BU owns with the possible exception of dorms.

[fj.livejournal.com]

Isn't importing prescription drugs illegal.

[magid.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, yes. It's not stopping people from importing prescription drugs from Canada, though, with the prices so much cheaper.

The explanations I've heard for why it's illegal have been about issues of truth in advertising (people getting what they order) and about safety (drugs that need to be kept refrigerated at certain temps but aren't necessarily). Both of these issues don't bring it to a level I'd think would have to be illegal; we deal with imports in a lot of similar areas (food, for instance). I think a large part of it is pressure from drug companies, so they can get US people to pay more.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

The thing that kills me is that the US made one of my inhalers illegal. It has CFCs and there are non-CFC based inhalers that are "good enough" but "good enough" shouldn't really count with asthma meds. The only good replacement I have found uses twice the amount of dosage than the old inhaler. (Did you know that nasally inhaled steroids can rot the cartilidge in your nose? Thanks FDA for upping my nasally inhaled steroids dosage.) I could get the good inhaler in other countries, though, if I wanted to become a criminal.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Gah. Sounds like a pretty horrible situation. I'm all for least medication necessary, and I think it's good to restrict CFCs, but medical purposes seem like the right place to consider things more individually than CFCs = bad.