Brits' Spanking Legac y | ‘Granny State’ Su rveillance | The Sober Side of Mexican Pot

Surveillance might seem an easy solution to elderly abuse, but it’s more complicated than family members realize.

It’s easy to decry the nanny state. But what about the granny state?

More and more states are passing laws and introducing regulations requiring nursing homes to let relatives set up webcams in the private rooms of elderly family members. Until 2014, only three states — Texas, New Mexico and Washington — had laws on such cameras in assisted living facilities. But over the past five years, five more states — Illinois, Louisiana, Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia — have introduced statutes.

Maryland allows these so-called granny cams but doesn’t require nursing homes to agree to relatives’ requests for them. The Florida and Minnesota legislatures are debating bills that will allow family members to demand that assisted living facilities set up webcams in the rooms of elderly relatives. The governments of New Jersey and Wisconsin are loaning out cameras to nursing homes.

Guillermo Nieto is ready to unleash Mexico’s farmers to cash in on the legalization of cannabis.

Guillermo Nieto is one of a chosen few. He and a handful of his countrymen and women have effectively been granted permission to cultivate marijuana for recreational use by the country’s Supreme Court. He manages a small crop of plants on the outskirts of Mexico City, and his long hair, friendly attitude and healthy sense of humor correspond to the typical image of a college stoner.

But Nieto, 42, cultivates for research as well as pleasure: He is the head of the country’s recently formed National Association for the Cannabis Industry, which represents some 200 companies interested in cashing in on the approaching legalization of cannabis.

Corporal punishment persists in the U.S. and other former British colonies thanks in part to a common law tradition. Women could be the answer.

California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician by training, learned quickly that discipline was dealt swiftly and painfully shortly after starting first grade in Jamaica. It’s an experience that contributed to her focus for the past several years on early childhood trauma and its impact on health concerns later in a person’s life.

Corporal punishment in the home gets plenty of attention, but it’s even more controversial when it’s being doled out in the classroom. A half-century ago, only three countries had banned the practice in schools: Italy, Japan and the East African island of Mauritius. Perceptions have changed, as has the science showing its damaging effects. And by 2016, more than 100 countries had made school spankings illegal.

Still, many kids are left vulnerable, according to an analysis by UNICEF last year. Worldwide, 732 million children attend schools where corporal punishment is not fully prohibited.