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Black Air Force Veteran Told To ‘Move Along’ By Cops For Sitting Inside A Seattle Frozen Yogurt Shop
FDA Restricts All Flavored E-Cigarettes; Moves To Ban Menthol
The Food and Drug Admin- istration announced two major attacks on the tobacco industry Thursday, saying it will start the process to ban menthol in cigarettes and limit sales of flavored e-cigarettes to youths.
The FDA's long-deliberated moves are driven by new fig- ures from the Centers for Dis- ease Control and Prevention showing a 78 percent increase in vaping by high school stu- dents, with 3.6 million high school and middle school stu- dents now using e-cigarettes.
Calling the numbers “aston- ishing," FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said he was stepping up his agency’s actions to curb youth vaping.
"Among high school stu- dents, current e-cigarette use increased from 1.5 percent in 2011 to 20.8 percent in 2018,'' the CDC report reads.
“These data shock my con- science: From 2017 to 2018, there was a 78 percent in- crease in current e-cigarette use among high school stu- dents and a 48 percent in- crease among middle school students,” Gottlieb said.
He said he would speed up FDA action to limit sales of fla- vored electronic cigarette
products to underage users, both in stores and online, and said he was starting the process to ban menthol in cig- arettes.
The FDA’s plans had been widely leaked last week but Gottlieb’s an- nouncement has changed somewhat since then. He said he would use the agency’s power to try to force outlets to sequester sales of vaping prod- ucts to keep them away from teens and children.
"We're not telling the retail stores you can't sell them," Gottlieb said. "If the estab- lishments want to continue to sell these fruity flavored prod- ucts, they're going to have to put into place measures that will make sure they are not going to get into the hands of kids," Gottlieb told NBC News.
Byron Ragland is a nine- year U. S. Air Force veteran who entered a Seattle frozen yogurt shop last week with a white woman and her son. Ragland is a court-ap- pointed special advocate and a visitation supervisor, which means he’s legally supposed to supervise adults who have lost custody of their children.
On the day in question, the young boy wanted ice cream so Ragland drove all three of them to a frozen yogurt franchise called Menchie’s. The trio was at the store for about 90 minutes when two Kirkland police officers ar- rived and asked Ragland to “move along.”
“They asked me to leave,” Ragland said recounting the incident with a reporter from The Seattle Times. “They asked for my ID. They told me the man- ager had been watching me and wanted me to move
BYRON RAGLAND
along.”
Store owner Ramon Cruz
wasn’t there but placed the 911 call on behalf of his two white female employees. “They’re kind of scared be- cause he looks suspicious,” Cruz tells the dispatcher. “All he does is look at his phone, look at them, look at his phone, look at them.”
MENCHIE’S FRANCHISE
Ragland said he’s used to people questioning why he, as a Black man is with white families, and would’ve of- fered an explanation, had someone asked. However, no one asked him. Instead, offi- cers arrived and forced him, along with the unidentified mother and son to leave as well.
Judge Moves Lawsuit From Black Farmers Who Were Sold Fake Seeds Forward
Lauren Underwood Makes
History As Youngest Black Woman Elected To Congress
A class action lawsuit filed by a group of Black farmers who were allegedly sold fake seeds will move forward, a judge decided.
The next hearing to pre- sent more facts involving bogus seeds sold to Black farmers by the Stine Seed Company is scheduled on Jan. 3, the Commercial Ap- peal reports.
The farmers say the proof that they were sold inferior seeds that cost them millions of dollars in sales is in the lack of crops they produced. With the help of science test- ing experts at Mississippi State University, the farmers discovered that the seeds they were sold were impo- tent. The farmers believe they are being purposely targeted in a multi-million dollar scheme to take their land from them.
“They swapped seeds and they sold the farmers fake seeds, but billed them for cer- tified seeds,” Thomas Bur- rell, president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists
Black farmers were sold fake seeds by the Stine Seed Company.
Association, told the Mem- phis newspaper.
“Mother nature doesn’t discriminate.
“No matter much rain Mother Nature gives you, if the germination is zero the seed is impotent,” Burrell reminded.
Burrell said Black farm- ers were getting a fraction – one-tenth – of the yield as their white neighbors.
Burrell said he believes it was done to steal Black farm-
ers land.
Bishop David Hall, a
Black farmer and chairman of the Ecumenical Action Committee for the group said he too was victimized, said he paid extra for bogus high- quality seeds.
“We bought nearly $90,000 worth of seed,” Hall explained. “It’s been known to produce high yield, so you expect it, when you pay the money for it, to pro- duce the high yields.”
Lauren Underwood, 32, is taking her #BlackGirlMagic to Congress after her history- making victory over her four- term GOP opponent, Rep. Randy Hultgren, in last week’s midterm elections.
Underwood, the winner in Illinois’ 14th congressional dis- trict, says she was triumphant because “the voters were inter- ested in a new generation of leadership.”
As the youngest Black woman elected to Congress, ac- cording to congressional records, Underwood cited Illinois first Black female sena- tor, Carol Moseley Braun, as one of the people she looked up to as a young girl growing up in Naperville.
“I felt like she was mine,” Underwood said as she thanked volunteers at her cam- paign headquarters the day after the election, the Chicago Tribune reports. “She was on TV every day. I knew that she was from my state and she rep- resented me. We also had Oprah Winfrey, and I felt
Lauren Underwood and Tracelyn Hairston appear at the Grand Opening of The David Yurman Boutique At City Center DC.
like she was mine. And she came on twice a day, every day, and she filmed her show an hour away. And I felt like, if they can be the two most pow- erful black women in the world — when I was in elementary school, that’s probably true — I could do whatever I wanted. And I think what’s happened this year is that women across the country have seen that there’s a way to step forward and lead and that there are mil- lions ready to support them.”
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