What A Day - The Fall Of Menthol

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

The pandemic continues to spiral out of control in India, with the country recently topping 200,000 deaths by the official count. The initial flights carrying relief from the U.S. landed yesterday. Vaccine manufacturing supplies from the U.S. will soon follow.The Food and Drug Administration announced yesterday that it’s creating standards over the next year to ban menthol in cigarettes and all flavoring in cigars. Flavored tobacco offerings are heavily marketed to Black people, and as a result, 85 percent of all menthol cigarette smokers are Black.And in headlines: five Lady Gaga dog robbers are arrested, Colorado state legislature okays human composting, and Disaster Girl sells her own meme as an NFT for $500,000.Show Notes:NYT: "How to Help India Amid the Covid Crisis" – https://nyti.ms/2Rfo8TqShow some love and vote for us as Best News and Politics podcast in the 25th Annual People’s Voice Awards! – https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2021/podcasts/general-series/news-politicsFor a transcript of this show, please visit crooked.com/whataday.

It's Friday, April 30th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is what a day where we are mentally preparing ourselves to take the masks off of our microphones. Yeah, we've been covering them up with N95s for the past year based on some very questionable advice. When I take this off, you're going to hear that I'm actually shouting all the time. On today's show, the government vows to snuff out menthol and other flavorings in tobacco products. Plus, we'll have some headlines. But first, the latest. They have burned over 800 bodies here in the last three weeks in what used to be a car park.

This in Delhi, a city of 20 million people, where the official death toll is one dead from COVID every four minutes. Wow. That's a news report on the dire situation in India where the pandemic continues to spiral out of control. The country recently topped 200,000 deaths, but that's the official count. Many believe that to be a significant undercount. Yeah, the scale of the crisis there is really, really hard to imagine and has quickly become the worst the world has seen. Yesterday alone, there were more than 375,000 new cases in the country in just a single day, yet another record, and more than 3,600 deaths. Overall, the total number of confirmed cases, which again, people think is an undercount, now stands at over 18 million. Yeah, that is an absolute wild statistic. Yeah. And to illustrate how dire it is for people there, there are reports of shortages of ventilators, beds, oxygen, to the point where on the black market, in some cases,

oxygen tanks are going for up to 16 times their normal price as people try to get them. Plus, burial grounds have been running out of capacity and there are funeral pyres at crematoriums in Delhi. Yeah, it's just a nightmare if you've seen any of the pictures or videos. And also yesterday, the U.S. State Department issued a warning for Americans about how serious the situation is in India. What did they have to say? Yeah, I mean, they told U.S. citizens who are there to leave as soon as possible if they can. They cited the lack of available medical care and reports of being denied admittance at overwhelmed hospitals. And then on top of that, the CDC said, quote, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants

and should avoid all travel to India. Yeah. So recently, countries like Germany and Pakistan sent aid to India, and the U.S. joined after pressure on the administration. So where does that stand? It actually basically just got started. So the initial flights from the U.S. that are carrying relief actually landed yesterday. And among the things the White House will be sending are $100 million in supplies, including oxygen cylinders, 15 million N95 masks, and 1 million rapid diagnostic tests. The U.S. is also sending vaccine manufacturing supplies, which they say would allow for the production of 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. And that part is really critical, Gideon, because the country is struggling to make enough vaccines, right? Yeah, I mean, in time to beat what's happening there, definitely. So by tomorrow, India will make vaccinations

eligible to everyone 18 and older. But an illustrative example of the problem, the New York Times reported that one doctor asked the Serum Institute, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer for a timeline for when their specific center could get the 3000 doses it needs each month. And the response was five to six months. That's not good. Yeah. And a portal to sign up for vaccinations reportedly crashed after 13 million people were able to actually get in and get those appointments. And thus far, only about 2% of the total population has been vaccinated.

Yeah. And for why it's gotten so bad, some people are looking at the dreaded V word variants. Is that why we're seeing such a travesty happening? It's a little bit complicated at the moment because there's a bit of a debate about whether the specific variant that's identified in India is the sole cause of what we're seeing. So anecdotally, you have some doctors that have pointed to infections rising among their fully vaccinated colleagues. However, researchers have said it's possible that India is also being overwhelmed by the B.1.1.7 British variant. The reason there's debate about which variant is the problem is

because the country isn't rigorously testing which strain is behind each infection like other countries do. So there's a lot more to learn about the presence of the variants and their behavior as well. Yeah. And in the midst of all this, where are India's political leaders? Well, in the past couple of weeks, campaigning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been holding these large election rallies in recent weeks, touting his own government as the crisis worsened. So just super spreading. Essentially, that's the, yeah, that's what it looks like. There has also been attention paid to a social media crackdown as of late as Facebook temporarily took down and then restored posts with the hashtag resign Modi. Definitely not the end of the story there. And we have barely

scratched the surface of what all is going on in India. But so you can help out too. We're going to have a link in our show notes for how you can get resources over there. Turning back to the US, Akilah, the FDA made a non-pandemic announcement that has to do with our collective health. So what is the update there? Yeah, so yesterday they announced that they're creating standards over the course of the next year to ban menthol in cigarettes and all flavorings in cigars. And the reason for this is especially sinister. Flavored tobacco offerings are often marketed to young people and black people and black young people. The longer you smoke, the worse your chances are of disease. And while the math is pretty obvious here, FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a

statement that the move would quote, address health disparities experienced by communities of color, low income populations, and LGBTQ plus individuals, all of whom are far more likely to use these tobacco products. Right. And so what are the actual numbers on who is most likely to be drawn to these flavorings in their tobacco? Yeah. So according to FDA research, 85% of menthol cigarette smokers are black. A lot of people love saying, stop making everything about race, when if you zoom out, everything does tend to come back to it. And a question I had that was asked and answered is that no, individuals who are in possession won't face consequences. This is really about changing the offerings from manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, importers, and retailers.

Yeah, that seems to be the better priority, of course. So this sounds like a net positive move on the FDA's behalf. But did they say exactly the impact that they think it's going to have? So their hope is that it could lead to nearly a million smokers quitting, including nearly a quarter million African-Americans. Now, this is assuming that they chose menthols for the taste and not because Joe Cool is so cool. I'm really not proud of the rhyme, but I said it, so I'm going to own it. Yeah, it is yours now for the rest of time, so happy for you.

Well, hopefully you can move on. So too long, didn't read. They're not expecting these smokers to necessarily just switch to another tobacco product, And they think these benefits could happen within a year and a half of the ban taking place. But beyond getting people to kick their nicotine habit, it's also about saving lives. We all know that smoking increases the risk of cancers, heart disease, birth defects, and that secondhand smoke kills people who happen to be in proximity. Black Americans have the highest mortality rates and shortest survival of most forms of cancer. So this really is seeking to right a wrong. That's right. And quickly,

what were some of the reactions to the announcement? So the NAACP or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People think that this will in fact help the advancement of black folks. Tobacco companies shockingly didn't say much about that, but they did say that they thought it wouldn't work. I guess, you know, they would know they're the ones who are pumping addictive products into these communities in the first place. But when has the chance of failure been a good reason not to at least try? The American Medical Association, who I respect way more, called the FDA's decision long overdue. We'll let you know if more develops, but that's the latest for now.

It's Friday WOD Squad, and for today's Temp Check, we're discussing one of history's most infamous trilogies, the Star Wars prequels, which Ewan McGregor discussed in a Hollywood reporter interview this week. For the first time, McGregor addressed the negative response to the films, saying, quote, they were universally not very much liked. McGregor played Obi-Wan in the movies, a role he's set to bring back in the 2022 Disney Plus series. And in trying to figure out where things went wrong with the prequels, he noted issues with the dialogue saying, quote,

I don't want to be rude, but it's not Shakespeare. So get to see if we agree with you. And we are going to listen to some extremely memorable prequel dialogue and review it on a scale of one to 10 lightsabers. I cannot wait. 11 year old me would think it's Shakespeare. So, OK, well, here we go. Here's Hayden Christensen romancing Natalie Portman

in Episode 2, Attack of the Clones. I don't like sand. It's coarse, rough, and irritating. And it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here, everything is soft and smooth. Oh, that was legitimately painful. I did not expect it to be so bad. The pan flutes were really, really the touch that put it over the top. It should be a sound on TikTok. Like I think that the teens at the beach this summer just be holding piles of sand saying,

I don't like sand. It's coarse. It's just like the least romantic thing I think anyone has ever said, but they were really selling it. Okay, so you got to rate this, Gideon. One to 10 lightsabers. Yeah, this is clocking in at like two,

and they're coarse. they're coarse like the sand Yeah hella generous I'm going with one lightsaber I think it's very very embarrassing We're gonna go into another one It is Hayden Christensen from Attack of the Clones Here we go Believe me I wish that I could just

wish away my feelings but I can't okay um i mean you know i just think like an easy edit is to not say the same word twice when it's not that you know integral like i wish i could wish i could wish could wish yeah i i don't know how that didn't come up in the edit they're like uh we're looking for another word for wish and we're not getting anything we're hitting a wall here hayden yeah i'd like can we use it not as a verb in a noun in the same sentence but like no that's all we've got um yikes you know that one i feel like it it's just like a bad take right like maybe he just paraphrased if that's actually written down that's a zero but if it is just you know him

paraphrasing them like cut we got it it's raining let's just get out of here i'll give it like a three perhaps with only one wish that would have been more heartfelt and really delivered i agree this is a conditional two and a half for me uh it does definitely bump down to a zero if that was written but we're gonna assume that hayden was kind of freelancing here. Well, well, just like that, we checked our temps,

stay safe, maybe just do another draft, you know, one more pass and we'll be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. In what shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, two elite universities came under fire for being disgustingly racist.

Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania put out a formal apology yesterday after being called out for using the bones of a black child killed by Philadelphia police in the 80s as a quote-unquote case study for an anthropology class. The remains belong to a black teenage girl who was killed in 1985 when the Philly police dropped a bomb onto the headquarters of MOVE, a black liberation group. Alan Mann, an anthropologist at UPenn and later at Princeton, held on to those remains for 36 years without permission from the family of the child. Mann's course at Princeton has officially been suspended for now, and the schools promised to return the remains to relatives. We have an update on a story we covered on our show. So a total of five people have been arrested and charged in connection with the shooting of Lady Gaga's dog walker and the theft of her pets.

As a refresher, Ryan Fisher was shot and injured in February while walking Gaga's three beloved French bulldogs, Koji Gustave and Miss Asia. The robbers got away with two of the dogs. Then, after Gaga offered a $500,000 reward, a woman who was seemingly not right showed up with the pups two days later doesn't take daniel craig from knives out to solve this crime it turns out the woman was involved she was dating the father of one of the suspects now she is being held on one million dollar bail along with the father and the three robbers in a sense you could say these people were on the edge of glory but someone couldn couldn't keep their p-p-p-poker face.

Oh, God. Maybe because they weren't born this way, and by this way, I mean good at stealing dogs or, you know, having a moral compass. I'm going to just dance myself away from that. Not ever touch it or think about it again. That's good. If you live in Colorado

and want to have flowers growing in you someday, you are in luck. The Colorado state legislature passed a bill this Tuesday that would allow for composting of human remains. Human composting is seen as an alternative to burials or cremations, turning bodies into soil in about 30 days. Under the new Colorado law, that soil could not be sold or used to grow food,

which sucks if your dream version of the afterlife is becoming butter lettuce and getting eaten as part of a hearty Cobb salad. We all have dreams. The bill passed with bipartisan support, meaning that both Republicans and Democrats agree that the body is just a vessel for the spirit and also worms be hungry. Washington legalized human composting in 2019

and lawmakers in Oregon, California, and New York have proposed human composting legislation as well. Obviously, none of this means anything to me because I'm going to live forever. Wow. I'm going to probably die, but I'm not going to think about the composting part. You know, figure it out after I'm dead. Yeah, fair. Here's the latest update in the world of money that only exists in the computer.

A viral meme, Disaster Girl, was just sold by its subject as a non-fungible token for $500,000. Zoe Roth was the little girl who in 2005 was photographed grinning in front of a house that was completely engulfed in flames as if to say, I planned this. Approximately 1 million photoshops later, Roth is 21 years old and in college, I'm a million years old, by turning her photo into an NFT and selling it online. She was able to take control of her own image for the first time since it was posted. Good for you. The Roth family still owns the copyright to Disaster Girl and will retain 10% of future sales, making it even less clear what an NFT is and why someone would ever buy one for half a million dollars. The new owner of the meme can claim that their copy is stored on the blockchain and marked as authentic. My version is a JPEG I can access at any time on Google Images. I'm willing to sell that for just $200,000.

That's a reasonable ask. It's a fair price, and I think you're going to get your money's worth. Yeah. All right, guys, come through with the offers. And those are the headlines. One more thing before we go, a correction from yesterday's show on the investigation into the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown by sheriff's deputies. The case is in North Carolina, not South Carolina. Our bad. That's all for today. If you like this show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, become a Cobb salad and tell

your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just Lady Gaga song titles, so you can make good puns like me. What a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out. Subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick.

And we're selling this episode as an NFT. Yeah. I think that, uh, you know, if you got money and you want to waste it, come on over here. Listen,

this is a very rare episode we're talking about. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun and Jazzy Marine are our associate producers. Our head writer is John Milstein and our executive producers are Leo Duran, Akilah Hughes, and me. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.