The Sacramento Bee: Federal E-Cigarette Rules On Parallel Track With New California Law
On Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill regulating electronic cigarettes as tobacco products. On Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration unveiled its own long-awaited e-cigarette regulations. How do they differ? (White, 5/5)

KQED: How Tobacco Actions By California And FDA Reinforce Each Other
Last night, California’s governor signed into law a package of sweeping tobacco regulations. This morning, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) handed down its own landmark regulations on e-cigarettes. (Aliferis, 5/5)

The Associated Press: Things To Know About California's New Tobacco, Vaping Laws
Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, has signed five laws that increase California’s minimum age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21, regulate electronic cigarettes and restrict tobacco use in various other ways. Here are some things to know about the new tobacco laws. (Noon, 5/6)

The San Francisco Business Journal: FDA'S E-Cigarette Rule Could Drive Small Businesses Out Of The Market
Federal regulation of electronic cigarettes could vaporize small businesses and enable giant tobacco companies to dominate this new industry. So contends the American Vaping Association in response to a final Food and Drug Administration rule, issued Thursday, that extends its authority to all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, cigars, hookah tobacco and pipe tobacco. (Hoover, 5/5)

Read more coverage from national media outlets about the new sweeping FDA regulations —

The New York Times: F.D.A. Imposes Rules For E-Cigarettes In A Landmark Move

The Wall Street Journal: FDA To Regulate E-Cigarettes, Ban Sales To Minors

The Associated Press: FDA Will Require E-Cigarettes And Contents To Be Reviewed

Los Angeles Times: FDA To Begin Regulating Electronic Cigarettes

Kaiser Health News: FAQ: How The FDA’s New Tobacco Rule Affects Consumers

The Sacramento Bee: A Better Way To Die? California’s End-Of-Life Law Launches June 9
Elizabeth Wallner vividly remembers the moment when she knew there had to be a better way to die. Diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, Wallner was in the midst of brutal chemotherapy that made her violently sick to her stomach. As she was retching into the toilet, her son, then 16, sat on the bathroom floor, helpless to ease her pain. When her time comes, Wallner, a 52-year-old education consultant who also cares for her aging parents, wants to spare her family any more agonizing memories and instead take a lethal prescription, prescribed by her doctor. Starting June 9, that option will be available for the first time in California. (Buck, 5/5)

The Sacramento Bee: California Republican Lawmakers Want More For Dental Care Program
Republican legislative leaders want Gov. Jerry Brown to include $200 million in additional money for low-income dental services in the revised budget proposal he releases next week, saying the increase would help improve a program criticized as a “vicious circle of dysfunction” in a recent report. Thursday’s letter to Brown from Assembly Minority Leader Chad Mayes, R-Yucca Valley, and Senate Minority Leader Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, cited an April report by the Little Hoover Commission that called the state’s Denti-Cal program a “bureaucratic backwater” that provides inadequate care to the 13 million Californians eligible for it. (Miller, 5/5)

The San Francisco Business Times: As Sanofi Hints At Higher Takeover Price, Medivation Holds Its Ground
Medivation Inc. stonewalled a hostile takeover threat Thursday from Sanofi SA, reiterating that the French drug maker's $9.3 billion offer still undervalues the San Francisco cancer drug developer. The poker game between the two companies comes a day after Pfizer Inc. reportedly approached Medivation about making a separate takeover bid and as Sanofi hinted that it could offer a higher price. Yet Wall Street was only slightly moved by the drama, pushing Medivation's stock up 16 cents, or 0.27 percent, to $59.22 per share. (Leuty, 5/5)

Bloomberg: Amgen Said To Join Health-Care Pack Weighing Medivation Bids
Amgen Inc. is considering a bid for Medivation Inc., joining a group of suitors circling the cancer therapy company, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Amgen is speaking with advisers as it evaluates whether to make an offer, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. No final decision has been made, and Amgen may decide against moving forward, they said. ... A spokeswoman for Thousand Oaks, California-based Amgen declined to comment. (Baigorri and Kirchfield, 5/5)

The Associated Press: Questions Arise About California Doctor's Response To Prince
Was a California doctor acting legally when he sent his son to Prince's home with a drug often used to treat people addicted to opiates such as prescription painkillers? Dr. Howard Kornfeld may have been trying to help, but he was not licensed to practice medicine in Minnesota and was not registered to care for patients there via telemedicine, as the state requires. His son, Andrew Kornfeld, who has been described as a pre-med student, was not a licensed prescriber. (Johnson, 5/5)

In other news —

The Associated Press: 2 Southern California Doctors Guilty In Hospice Fraud Scheme
Two Southern California doctors have been convicted of Medicare fraud for falsely certifying patients were terminally ill making them eligible for taxpayer-funded hospice care. Boyao Huang of Pasadena and Sri Wijegoonaratna of Anaheim were convicted Thursday of health care fraud. Each could face up to 10 years in federal prison. (5/5)

The Sacramento Business Journal: Former Sacramento Dentist Gets Prison Time For Health Care Fraud
A former Sacramento dentist who submitted false claims and performed unnecessary dental procedures was sentenced Thursday in federal court to prison time. David M. Lewis, 62, of Sacramento, targeted employees of United Parcel Service, whose dental plan provided 100 percent coverage without annual limits. (Anderson, 5/5)

The Modesto Bee: Doctors Medical Center Gets Another A On Safety Report Card
Doctors Medical Center of Modesto received a fourth consecutive A from The Leapfrog Group, a watchdog service that regularly tracks the medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections that harm patients in more than 2,500 hospitals in the country. (Carlson, 5/5)

The Press Democrat: New Suicide Prevention Program Targets Youths In Sonoma County
Aurora Santa Rosa Hospital, a local inpatient psychiatric facility, is partnering with a national youth suicide prevention organization to help curb what the group calls the “silent epidemic” of teen suicide. Aurora staff will be trained by The Jason Foundation to coordinate anti-suicide education and outreach efforts in the region, said Clark Flatt, founder and president of the nonprofit Hendersonville, Tenn., foundation. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 24, behind car accidents and other unintentional injuries, Flatt said Thursday, citing 2014 data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Espinoza, 5/5)

The Sacramento Bee: Jerry Brown Signs Tobacco Control Bills, Lets Us Breathe Easier
California has one of the nation’s most smoke-free reputations. But that image has always been more hard-won than it seems. Tobacco companies lavish hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to politicians each election cycle. Not coincidentally, efforts to curb the lethal consequences of smoking die every year in one or another legislative committee. There’s a price to be paid for crossing the industry and a reward for currying its favor, and even here, legislators know that. (5/4)

San Jose Mercury News: California's Historic Anti-Smoking Week
The tobacco industry is having its worst week since 1990, when Congress banned smoking on all domestic airline flights lasting six hours or less. And "worst" for Big Tobacco is good for the rest of us. On Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a sweeping package of anti-smoking bills that will regulate the manufacture and sale of e-cigarettes in California and increase the legal smoking age from 18 to 21. Then the Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday it would extend federal regulatory authority to e-cigarettes, a $3.5 billion industry that attracted an estimated 450,000 middle and high school students to start the habit in 2014. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, tobacco lobby. (5/5)

The Sacramento Bee: A Tipping Point On Vaping And E-Cigarettes, At Last
With the Food and Drug Administration’s publication of sweeping new e-cigarette and vaping regulations, a tipping point finally appears to have been reached. Thursday’s new rules, which the e-cigarette and tobacco companies have fought ferociously since 2011, came less than a day after Gov. Jerry Brown signed similar restrictions in California and a high court cleared the way for tough e-cigarette regulation in the European Union. They’re not a moment too soon. (5/5)

Los Angeles Times: New Vaping Rules Are A Mixed Bag
Long-awaited federal rules to keep electronic cigarettes out of the hands of children finally arrived Thursday, and not a moment too soon. Use of the nicotine delivery devices has been growing rapidly among middle- and high-school-aged teens in the last few years. The rules, in the works since 2010, put the regulation of all tobacco products — including “novel and future” ones — under the authority of the Food and Drug Administration for the first time. This is a profoundly important step in reining in e-cigarettes, a popular product with unknown long-term health effects that has been virtually unsupervised by government until now. (5/6)

Los Angeles Times: Will Hospitals Reject California's Assisted Suicide Law?
Medical leaders at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena voted behind closed doors this week for the facility's hundreds of doctors and affiliated personnel to opt out of California's assisted suicide law, which goes into effect June 9. If the proposed amendment to the hospital's medical rules is approved by the board of directors this month, Huntington will become one of the largest non-religious medical institutions statewide to turn its back on a law that Gov. Jerry Brown called "a comfort" to anyone "dying in prolonged and excruciating pain." (David Lazarus, 5/6)

The San Jose Mercury News: California Extends Coverage To Kids; More Docs Needed
Sunday marks a bright day in the struggle to provide health insurance for every child in California. It's the day all children, regardless of immigration status, will have access to checkups and other basic preventive care as part of the state's Medi-Cal expansion signed into law last year by Gov. Jerry Brown. The dark cloud looming on the horizon is the state's failure to offer adequate compensation for doctors treating millions of low-income patients. It's meaningless to give insurance to the needy if there aren't enough doctors willing to accept them as patients. Even before this, many Medi-Cal patients have had to resort to the emergency room because they couldn't find a doctor to see them. (4/30)

Los Angeles Times: Will The Cancer Moonshot Work? Cancer Experts Cite Need For Money And Data
In calling for "a new national effort to ... cure cancer" during his State of the Union speech in January and labeling it a "cancer moonshot," President Obama deliberately evoked John F. Kennedy's 1961 commitment to "achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." But are the two efforts comparable? President Kennedy cited NASA's need for a $5.4-billion budget aimed at a very specific goal; Obama is hoping Congress will heed his call for a $1-billion launching fund for a much more nebulous and complicated goal. (Michael Hiltzik, 5/2)

The Sacramento Bee: While Our Focus Is On Zika, Don’t Forget About Syphilis
High-profile efforts are underway to prepare for a potential sharp rise in the transmission of the Zika virus – either through mosquito bites or from Zika-infected males to their sexual partners. While this work is critical, we can’t lose sight of an existing public health crisis. In recent years, California has seen an alarming increase in the rate of sexually transmitted diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently ranked California first among all states for the total number of cases for chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. (Julie Rabinovitz, 5/4)

The Ventura County Star: Cancer Care
The recent government proposal to “experiment” with cancer treatments will harm patients and the doctors who treat them. Proposed changes to Medicare’s drug program will force physicians to take a cookie-cutter approach to treating cancer patients. There are more than 200 different types of cancers, and every patient responds differently to the care they receive. The ability to personalize treatment has led to unprecedented survival rates for Americans battling cancer, which would be in jeopardy if Medicare switches to a more impersonal approach. (Marissa Rivera, 4/30)

The Bakersfield Californian: Opioids, 'Pill Mills' And The Ongoing War On Drugs
When President Obama recently chose to highlight the national opioid addiction crisis, I couldn’t help but think that folks in this community hardly need a lecture on opioid addiction. Heroin has been a plague in parts of Kern County going back over a hundred years. The current crisis is driven by prescription opioids, and the statistics, as the president noted, are beyond staggering. (Ronald Beerman, 5/2)