FDA chief: Stop kids from vaping

Compiled from news services

Tobacco companies need to step up efforts to stop kids from vaping, according to a warning from U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

The comments are the latest in a series of FDA efforts to crack down on companies that are producing e-cigarettes and selling them to minors.

E-cigs like the products made by Juul Labs Inc. are the newest craze in underage tobacco use as youth smoking rates of combustible cigarettes hover around historic lows.

Tobacco companies shouldn’t build businesses that rely on getting kids hooked to nicotine, Mr. Gottlieb said in prepared remarks at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago. Instead, companies need to help address the problem.

Mr. Gottlieb’s campaign against youth vaping is part of an attempt to enact broader tobacco regulations. He proposed in July a twopronged plan to reduce tobacco-related deaths in the U.S.

The first half of the plan is to reduce the amount of nicotine in combustible cigarettes.

The second half is to ease the regulatory pathway for products that are less harmful sources of nicotine.

If enacted, the rules would comprise the most sweeping tobacco overhaul since 1964.

E. coli outbreak numbers

Five people have died and nearly 200 people from nearly three dozen states have been sickened by E. coli in a growing outbreak that has so far stumped federal investigators.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the death tally Friday, more than two months after the first illnesses occurred in mid-March. Although investigators have determined that E. coli came from contaminated romaine lettuce that were grown in Arizona’s Yuma region near the border to Southern California, the Food and Drug Administration has not been able to link the outbreak to one farm, processor or distributor, Scott Gottlieb, the agency’s commissioner, and Stephen Ostroff, the deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, said in an update Thursday.

With the tainted vegetables now off the shelves and the growing season over, the FDA may never crack the case, frustrating consumer advocates.

Uber driver in custody

DENVER— An Uber driver in Denver killed his passenger early Friday morning, telling a witness he had fired several times in self-defense, police said.

Michael Andre Hancock, 29, was arrested and held without bond, according to Denver County Jail records. He is being investigated for first-degree murder.

The incident comes amid abuse allegations and questions over Uber’s ability to properly screen its drivers.

Police said Mr. Hancock shot Hyun Kim, 45, with a semiautomatic pistol during a confrontation at 2:47 a.m. Friday, according to a partially redacted affidavit of probable cause provided to The Washington Post.

Cook to lead task force

WASHINGTON — A lawyer tapped to lead a task force at the Environmental Protection Agency overseeing cleanups at the nation’s most polluted places worked until recently for a top chemical and plastics manufacturer with a troubled legacy of creating some of those toxic sites.

Steven D. Cook has been named as the new chair of the Superfund Task Force, which EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt created last year to revamp how the agency oversees cleanups at the more than 1,300 toxic sites.