Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Adult Children As Caretakers; The Mythology Of CBD As A Cure-All; And An Aging America
The New York Times: ‘I Put My Own Life On Hold’: Adult Children On The Pain, And Joy, Of Caring For Elderly Parents
Daughters said they sacrificed careers when their relatives wouldn’t. Others said hiring help sapped finances. And more than a few found treasured final moments with loved ones despite the overwhelming work of caring for them. After The Times published a pair of articles on elder care — one about a Connecticut home health aide and another about women forgoing careers to care for older relatives — hundreds of our readers shared their own experiences with the hardships of trying to make the final years of a loved one’s life comfortable. (Gardiner, 9/5)
Newsweek: Pop Culture Says CBD Cures Everything—Here's What Scientists Say
Jonathan Duce entered Dion's, his neighborhood liquor store in Waltham, Massachusetts, walked past the wine and six-packs and headed straight for the gummy worms. At $69 for a jar of 25, they were more expensive than the Chateauneuf du Pape, but he didn't mind. His wife likes them, he says, because they help her sleep. The gummies aren't just candy. Each one packs a 30-milligram wallop of cannabidiol, or CBD, a constituent of the cannabis plant, more commonly known as hemp, a cousin of marijuana. Dion's started selling CBD products four months ago and now one in every 15 people who walk in buys at least one of the store's 30 CBD products, which include tinctures, vaping cartridges, smokable "flower," capsules and lotions. "But gummies are our biggest mover," says Kristen Correia, who works behind the counter. (Freedman, 8/29)
Politico: America, The Gerontocracy
Hate crime is rising, the Arctic is burning, and the Dow is bobbing like a cork on an angry sea. If the nation seems intolerant, reckless and more than a little cranky, perhaps that’s because the American republic is showing its age. Somewhere along the way, a once-new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal (not men and women; that came later) became a wheezy gerontocracy. Our leaders, our electorate and our hallowed system of government itself are extremely old. (Noah, 9/3)
The Atlantic: Marijuana During Pregnancy: A 1994 Study Drives Opinion
Fifty years ago this summer, Melanie Dreher, a registered nurse and a young graduate student in anthropology, landed in rural Jamaica to study how people there were using cannabis. It was the same summer of the moon landing and Woodstock, where “400,000 of my best friends were having a good time,” she says. Dreher didn’t really want to be in Jamaica. But doing fieldwork in an unfamiliar place was required by her Columbia University doctorate program, and for Dreher, who had never been to Jamaica or used cannabis, this assignment met that criterion. (Callahan and Undark, 9/2)
CalMatters: California’s Attempt To Reduce Police Shootings, Explained
Civil rights advocates have long sought increased accountability for law enforcement in California, particularly in recent years, as police shootings and the Black Lives Matter movement have roiled cities nationwide. But even in a Democrat-controlled Capitol, those efforts — to make police misconduct records public, to require the release of body camera footage, to create an independent body to investigate police shootings — have historically failed amid objections from law enforcement organizations and their influential unions. (Rosenhall, 7/18)
