Poisoning for Profit: Regulatory Rollbacks, Public Health, and State-Facilitated Corporate Crime

Abstract

A core policy goal of the Trump administration has been rolling back or weakening regulations designed to protect workers, consumers, the environment, and general public health from known corporate harms. These rollbacks constitute the most far-reaching effort to free corporate capital from regulatory restraint since the onset of corporate regulation at the dawn of the 20th century. We propose that blending state–corporate crime and public health frameworks can help us better understand and analyze the short- and long-term impacts of the current rollback regime. We also propose that the regulatory rollbacks currently underway create conditions for an increase in state-facilitated corporate crimes that will result in excess deaths, avoidable illnesses and injuries, and a degradation of public health. We provide specific examples involving deregulatory acts regarding water, air, labor, and food, concluding with a call for a public health criminology and an openly democratic, evidence based, and discrimination-free system for minimizing the harms of corporate profit-seeking.