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By NewsPress Now
Massachusetts lawmakers push for an effort to ban all tobacco sales
BOSTON | A handful of Massachusetts lawmakers are hoping to persuade their colleagues to support a proposal that would make the state the first to adopt a ban meant to eliminate the use of tobacco products over time.
Other locations have weighed similar “generational tobacco bans,” which phase out the use of tobacco products based not just on a person’s age but on birth year.
Under a Massachusetts law signed in 2018, the age to buy any tobacco product — including cigarettes, cigars and e-cigarettes — was raised to 21. Massachusetts also has banned the sale of all flavored tobacco products in an effort to reduce youth interest in nicotine.
The new proposal, which lawmakers plan to file next year, would expand the effort to curb smoking by gradually ending all sales of nicotine and tobacco products. If the bill is approved, young people not old enough to legally purchase nicotine and tobacco would never be lawfully able to purchase them in Massachusetts, thereby creating no more new users.
It would not apply to marijuana, and the cutoff date would be adjusted when passed to ensure everyone age 21 and above at that time would not be affected.
First town to adopt a generational smoking ban
Brookline, a town of about 63,000 neighboring Boston, was the first municipality in the country to adopt such a ban in 2020. Instead of raising the age for purchasing cigarettes, the bylaw blocks the sale of tobacco to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2000. The rule went into effect in 2021.
That would mean at some point in the future no one would be allowed to buy any tobacco products in the town. The measure was challenged, but the state’s highest court weighed in earlier this year, upholding the ban.
Other Massachusetts cities and towns already have approved similar tobacco bans, including Malden, Melrose, Reading, Stoneham, Wakefield, and Winchester.
Unclear levels of support
Democratic state Sen. Jason Lewis, one of the backers of the statewide proposal, said the bill would “save countless lives and create a healthier world for the next generation.”
“We all know the devastating health effects of nicotine and tobacco products, especially on our youth,” he said.
Nicotine and tobacco products are addictive and can increase the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, stroke and other illnesses.
Nearly 9 out of 10 adults who smoke cigarettes daily first tried smoking by age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also found that in 2024 about 2 in 5 students who had ever used a tobacco product currently used them.
Peter Brennan, executive director of the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association, said the proposal would undercut small mom and pop shops that rely on cigarettes for a significant portion of their sales.
It also would put stores located near neighboring states that allow the sale of cigarettes to all adults at a competitive disadvantage.
“It’s a terrible idea,” he said. “You’re really just taking away adults’ right to purchase a legal, age-restricted product.”
Taking certain rights away from some adults and not others is likely unconstitutional, he said, adding that other prohibition efforts haven’t worked, like past bans on alcohol, marijuana and gambling.
It’s unclear how much support the proposal has in the Legislature.
Massachusetts has taken other steps in recent decades to curb smoking, including raising taxes on cigarettes. Those taxes would presumably be reduced and ultimately eliminated by an incremental statewide smoking ban.
Any reduction in cigarette tax revenue would be more than offset by reduced healthcare costs and other savings, Lewis said.
In 2022, 10.4% of adults in Massachusetts reported smoking cigarettes, according to the state Department of Public Health.
Other places weighing similar bans
Some California lawmakers have pushed to ban all tobacco sales, filing legislation last year to make it illegal to sell cigarettes and other products to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2007.
In 2022, New Zealand became the first nation to pass a law intended to impose a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes by mandating that tobacco can’t ever be sold to anybody born on or after Jan. 1, 2009. The law was later axed.
In the U.K., Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proposed raising the legal age that people in England can buy cigarettes by one year, every year until it is eventually illegal for the whole population. The proposal failed to win approval earlier this year.
Canadian news publishers sue OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement
OTTAWA, Ontario | A coalition of Canadian news publishers, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using news content to train its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence system.
The outlets said in a joint statement on Friday that OpenAI regularly breaches copyright by scraping large amounts of content from Canadian media.
“OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners,” the statement said.
The publishers argue that OpenAI practices undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in journalism, and that content is protected by copyright.
“News media companies welcome technological innovations. However, all participants must follow the law, and any use of intellectual property must be on fair terms,” the statement said.
Generative AI can create text, images, videos and computer code based on a simple prompt, but the systems must first study vast amounts of existing content.
OpenAI said in a statement that its models are trained on publicly available data. It said they are “grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair for creators and support innovation.”
The company said it collaborates “closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search” and offers outlets “easy ways to opt-out should they so desire.”
This is the first such case in Canada, though numerous lawsuits are underway in the United States, including a case by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft.
Some news organizations have chosen to collaborate rather than fight with OpenAI by signing deals to get compensated for sharing news content that can be used to train its AI systems.
The Associated Press is among the news organizations that have made licensing deals over the past year with OpenAI. Others include The Wall Street Journal and New York Post publisher News Corp., The Atlantic, Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France’s Le Monde newspaper and the London-based Financial Times.
Canada has passed a law requiring Google and Meta to compensate news publishers for the use of their content, but has previously declined to say whether the Online News Act should apply to use by AI systems.
In response to that legislation, Meta pulled news from its platforms in Canada, while Google has reached a deal to pay $100 million Canadian (US$ 71 million) to Canadian news outlets.
Average rate on a 30-year mortgage
in the U.S. slips
The average rate on a 30-year mortgage in the U.S. eased this week, though it remains near 7% after mostly rising in recent weeks.
The rate slipped to 6.81% from 6.84% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Wednesday. That’s still down from a year ago, when the rate averaged 7.22%.
Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners seeking to refinance their home loan to a lower rate, rose this week. The average rate climbed to 6.1% from 6.02% last week. A year ago, it averaged 6.56%, Freddie Mac said.
Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, including the yield on U.S. 10-year Treasury bonds, which lenders use as a guide to price home loans. The yield, which mostly hovered around 4.4% last week and was below 3.70% in September, has eased this week. It was at 4.23% at midday Wednesday.
Elevated mortgage rates and rising home prices have kept homeownership out of reach of many would-be homebuyers. U.S. home sales are on track for their worst year since 1995.
“The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage moved down this week, but not by much,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Potential homebuyers are also waiting on the sidelines, causing demand to be lackluster. Despite the low sales activity, inventory has only modestly improved and remains dramatically undersupplied.”
Mortgage rates slid to just above 6% in September following the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut its main interest rate for the first time in more than four years. While the central bank doesn’t set mortgage rates, its actions and the trajectory of inflation influence the moves in the 10-year Treasury yield. The central bank’s policy pivot is expected to eventually clear a path for mortgage rates to generally go lower. But that could change if the next administration’s policies send inflation into overdrive again.
September’s pullback in mortgage rates helped drive a pickup in sales of previously occupied U.S. homes last month, and likely helped give a boost to demand early last month.
The National Association of Realtor’s pending home sales index rose 2% in October from the previous month, its third straight monthly increase, the trade group said Wednesday. Pending transactions were up 5.4% compared to October last year.
A lag of a month or two usually exists between when a contract is signed and when the home sale is finalized, which makes pending home sales a bellwether for future completed home sales.
Still, because mortgage rates have mostly kept rising in recent weeks, that could dampen sales this month and next in what’s already typically a slow season for the housing market.
“Though mortgage rates are likely to decline in the coming weeks, the dip will be too little and too late to boost home sales in December,” said Ralph McLaughlin, senior economist at Realtor.com.
Forecasting the trajectory of mortgage rates is difficult, given that rates are influenced by many factors, from government spending and the economy, to geopolitical tensions and stock and bond market gyrations.
Economists predict that mortgage rates will remain volatile this year, but generally forecast them to hover around 6% in 2025.
Number of Americans filing for jobless benefits falls
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week, remaining near seven-month lows.
Jobless claim applications fell by 2,000 to 213,000 for the week of Nov. 23, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The previous week’s level was revised up by 2,000 from 213,000, to 215,000.
However, continuing claims, the total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits, rose by 9,000 to 1.91 million for the week of Nov. 16. That’s the highest number since Nov. 13, 2021.
While the number of new people applying for jobless aid each week remains at historically healthy levels, some who are receiving benefits are finding it harder to land new jobs. That suggests that demand for workers is waning, even as the economy remains strong.
The four-week average of weekly claims, which quiets some of the weekly volatility, was 1.9 million, an increase of 13,500 from the previous week’s revised average.
Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for U.S. layoffs.
Also on Wednesday, The Commerce Department reported the American economy expanded at a healthy 2.8% annual pace from July through September on strong consumer spending and a surge in exports, leaving unchanged its initial estimate of third-quarter growth.
In response to some weakening employment data and receding consumer prices, the Federal Reserve slashed its benchmark interest rate in September by a half a percentage point and by another quarter-point earlier this month.
With inflation still elevated, Federal Reserve officials expressed caution at their last meeting about cutting interest rates too quickly, adding to uncertainty about their next moves.
Most economists think officials will probably cut rates next month for the third time this year, but could then skip cutting at following meetings. Wall Street investors see the odds of another quarter-point reduction in the Fed’s key rate at their December meeting as nearly even, according to CME Fedwatch.
—From AP reports
