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Health November 18, 2019

Trump Administration’s Efforts To Ban Most Flavored Vaping Products Have Stalled Out

The White House is apparently backpedaling on its plan to ban most flavors in vaping products. The proposed FDA rule is unpopular with vape shop owners, and that’s creating political blowback.



ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The Trump administration’s efforts to ban most flavored vaping products have stalled out. The president announced two months ago that he would do something to address the youth vaping epidemic. A plan was supposed to have been announced in a matter of weeks. NPR science correspondent Richard Harris explains what happened instead.

RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: When President Trump said he was endorsing a Food and Drug Administration proposal to ban most flavored vaping products, he acknowledged there were some economic consequences.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Vaping has become a very big business, as I understand it – like, a giant business in a very short period of time. But we can’t allow people to get sick, and we can’t have our youth be so affected.

HARRIS: The policy proposal hit just as health officials were investigating lung injuries and deaths among people who vaped. Scientists now say that’s primarily from vaping dubious marijuana products. But Paul Billings at the American Lung Association was also focused on the role that flavored e-cigarettes played in teen nicotine addiction.

PAUL BILLINGS: We were very optimistic, encouraged when the president announced that he wanted to clear the markets of all flavored e-cigarettes that play such an important role in addicting millions of kids to these products.

HARRIS: That optimism started to fade after the policy did not appear as promised in the following weeks.

BILLINGS: It stretched into months. A package was sent to the White House for review, and then it cleared. And then everything stopped on November 5.

HARRIS: The Washington Post reports that’s when the president’s political staff advised him not to sign off on the new rules.

Paul Blair at the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform was part of the push against the new rules.

PAUL BLAIR: Look. There are legitimate concerns about teens experimenting with these products, but running towards the 1920s in terms of prohibition is a vote-losing issue.

HARRIS: That message hit the airwaves of Fox News, which ran commercials like this one.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: If you enact a flavor ban, this will cost you the election.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I vape, and I vote.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Vapor Technology Association is responsible for the content of this advertising.

HARRIS: And advocates assert that a vaping flavor ban could tilt the election in close states against Trump. Blair’s organization polled people who vape in swing states like Michigan a few years back.

BLAIR: Three out of 4 of these adult consumers are single-issue voters.

HARRIS: And Blair says that issue is access to vaping, including flavored products. Some also argue that getting rid of flavored vaping products could drive people back to smoking cigarettes, which are the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. On top of that, Blair says the industry itself provides 150,000 jobs through vape shops and manufacturers.

BLAIR: It’d be a pretty significant hit in an election year for a guy that’s focused on deregulations, spurring economic growth and not killing jobs.

HARRIS: Big Tobacco is also part of the story, says Paul Billings at the American Lung Association.

BILLINGS: The largest tobacco companies in the world, like Altria and Reynolds, are major players in the e-cigarette business, along with these vape shops.

HARRIS: And these forces appear to have won out over the public health advocates. So Billings says the lead could well shift to states, counties and cities.

BILLINGS: And so we fully expect, irrespective of what the administration does or does not do, that states and localities will continue to move forward.

HARRIS: A White House spokesman says the new rules haven’t been killed, but it’s not clear what, if anything, will survive this process.

Richard Harris, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SMALL BLACK SONG, “SOPHIE”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business November 18, 2019

Politics, Industry Backlash Stall White House Ban On Flavored Vaping Products

Attendees hold “We Vape, We Vote” signs ahead of a Trump rally last month in Dallas. The politics surrounding vaping and industry pushback against regulation appear to have derailed the Trump administration’s plan to ban the sales of many vaping products.

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The Trump administration’s plan to ban most flavored vaping products has stalled out, at least for the moment.

Two months ago, President Trump announced he was pursuing the new policy to put a dent in the youth vaping epidemic. The plan was supposed to have been unveiled in a matter of weeks.

But industry pushback and the politics of vaping appear to have derailed that process.

On Sept. 11, when the president announced that he was endorsing a Food and Drug Administration proposal to ban those products, he acknowledged there were economic consequences.

“Vaping has become a very big business as I understand it. A giant business in a very short period of time,” he told reporters at the White House. “But we can’t allow people to get sick and we can’t have our youth to be so affected.”

The policy proposal hit just as health officials were investigating lung injuries and deaths among people who vaped. Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now say that’s primarily from vaping dubious marijuana products.

But Paul Billings, national senior vice president of public policy at the American Lung Association, says the organization was also focused on the role that flavored e-cigarettes played in teen nicotine addiction.

Mint, menthol, fruit and candy flavors would all be banned under the original proposal, leaving only tobacco-flavored vaping products. Those would appeal less to teens, though most adults also prefer non-tobacco flavors.

“We were very optimistic, encouraged when the president announced he wanted to clear the markets of all flavored e-cigarettes,” Billings says, noting that these attractive flavors “play such an important role in addicting millions of kids to these products.”

However, Billings’ optimism started to fade in the following weeks when the policy did not appear as promised. “It stretched into months,” Billings says.

The FDA sent its proposal to the Office of Management and Budget for review. It cleared that process on Nov. 4. “And then everything stopped on Nov. 5,” Billings says.

The Washington Post reports that is when the political staffers advised Trump not to sign off on the new rules.

Paul Blair, director of strategic initiatives at the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, was part of the push against the new rules. “Look, there are legitimate concerns about teens experimenting with these products,” he says, “but running toward the 1920s in terms of prohibition is a vote-losing issue.”

That message hit the airwaves of Fox News, which ran commercials produced by the Vapor Technology Association that portrayed e-cigarette users who said they wouldn’t vote for a president who banned vaping products.

Advocates assert that a vaping flavor ban could tilt the election against Trump in key swing states. A few years ago, Blair’s organization polled people who vape in states such as Michigan, concluding that 3 out of 4 of them were single-issue voters — and that the issue that energized them was access to vaping products.

Some also argue that getting rid of flavored vaping products could drive people who switched to e-cigarettes back to smoking cigarettes, which are the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.

On top of that, Blair says the industry itself provides 150,000 jobs through vape shops, manufacturers and related services.

“It would be a pretty significant hit in an election year for a guy that’s focused on deregulation, spurring economic growth and not killing jobs,” Blair says.

Big Tobacco is also part of this story, says the American Lung Association’s Billings.

“The largest tobacco companies in the world, like Altria and [R.J.] Reynolds, are major players in the e-cigarette business, along with these vape shops,” he says.

And those forces appear to have won out over the public health advocates, at least at the federal level, “so we fully expect — irrespective of what the administration does or does not do — that states and localities will continue to move forward,” Billings says.

A White House spokesman says the new rules haven’t been killed, but it’s not clear what, if anything, will survive this process.

You can contact NPR science correspondent Richard Harris at rharris@npr.org.

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Sports November 18, 2019

Serena Williams’ Busted Tennis Racket Is Up For Auction

The racket is the one she smashed at the 2018 U.S. Open during a match she lost to Naomi Osaka. That was the game where Williams got a charge for illegal coaching, and got into it with the referee.



RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Good morning. I’m Rachel Martin. A famous tennis racket is up for sale, and it doesn’t even work. It’s Serena Williams’ Wilson Blade, the one she smashed at the 2013 U.S. Open during a match she lost to Naomi Osaka. It was the crack heard round the world after a dramatic game where Williams got a charge for illegal coaching and got into it with the ref. Williams gave the busted racket to a ball boy. He sold it for $500 to a collectibles store to get some cash for college. Now the store’s auctioning it off for a whole lot more.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Entertainment November 18, 2019

Burna Boy: Tiny Desk Concert

Credit: Mhari Shaw/NPR

While preparing for Burna Boy‘s Tiny Desk appearance, it was evident early on that his performance would be strictly business. After exchanging pleasantries on the phone with his mother and manager, Bose Ogulu, she made it clear there wouldn’t be time for much of anything else. “Burna has been working really hard so please bear with us,” she told me. “The band will arrive well before him. Let me know the latest time at which he can arrive.”

The Nigerian singer and songwriter is one of the biggest African artists in the world. He’s also a pioneer of Afro-fusion which incorporates sonics and influences from a myriad of genres, laid on an Afrobeat foundation. The sound has been inescapable this year. The man born Damini Ogulu has been touring the world for the majority of 2019 and has at least 10 songs in the current nightclub rotation. Beyoncé took notice and offered him a place on The Lion King soundtrack, The Lion King: The Gift.

Sandwiched between two sold-out concerts in Washington D.C., his Tiny Desk performance offers something relatively different from what we’re used to seeing at his rowdy stage shows. He’s more reflective here and restrained, allowing his songwriting to shine. In the spirit of one of his heroes, Fela Kuti, he weaves through highlights from his breakout album, African Giant, that are liable to move your body as much as your social consciousness.

SET LIST

  • “Gbona”
  • “Wetin Man Go Do”
  • “Dangote”
  • “Ye”

MUSICIANS

Burna Boy: vocals; Emmanuel “Manny” Abiola-Jacobs: drums; Michael “Maestro” Masade Jr.: keys; Jola Ade: keys; Gaetan Judd: guitar; Christina Matovu: vocals; Otis “Bdoc” Mensah: bass

CREDITS

Producers: Bobby Carter, Morgan Noelle Smith; Creative Director: Bob Boilen; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri, CJ Riculan, Jack Corbett; Executive Producer: Lauren Onkey; VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann; Photo: Mhari Shaw/NPR

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Sports November 17, 2019

Pro Runner Mary Cain Discusses Abuse Allegations Against Nike

NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with elite runner Mary Cain about the abuse she says she experienced during her time running with Nike’s Oregon Project.



MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

As a high school student, Mary Cain was known as the fastest girl in a generation. At 17, she became the youngest American ever to make a world championship track and field team. Then she joined Nike’s elite Oregon Project, and her body and her running career fell apart.

Cain says that happened because she was surrounded by an all-male coaching team who were unqualified and ill-equipped to coach a teenage girl, and their training methods not only broke down her body. They nearly broke her mental health. Now at 23, she’s begun speaking out. She posted a graphic and powerful video describing her experiences as part of the New York Times’ “Equal Play” opinion video series, and she is with us now.

Mary Cain, thanks so much for joining us.

MARY CAIN: No, thank you for having me.

MARTIN: So, first of all, how did you start running? How did you figure out that you were good at this?

CAIN: I think kind of like a lot of kids do growing up in that I was the fastest kid in elementary school. And then in middle school, I was encouraged to try out for the varsity program because in the school I went to, it was K through 12. So if you were in middle school, you could actually compete with the high schoolers. And by seventh grade, I made the New York state championship meet. And so it just kind of took off from there.

MARTIN: So did you – people just go, like, wow, that girl is fast?

(LAUGHTER)

CAIN: I mean, the truth is, you know, in elementary school, I ran some times that were, you know, unofficial just kind of, like, gym class mile-level stuff. And I remember I clocked as a fifth grader maybe a 6:10 mile. And the coaches at the time, who, you know, just taught the gym class, were, like, whoa. That’s really fast. And after, like, a quick Google search later at home, we were, like, oh, that would actually rank you surprisingly high in the country.

MARTIN: (Laughter).

CAIN: And it was just a very weird, maybe low-key way to get into the sport because it was so – just for fun.

MARTIN: So how did you come to the attention of the Nike project, the Oregon Project, which was headed at the time by a very famous runner named Alberto Salazar? How did that happen?

CAIN: So in my sophomore year of high school, I ran in Barcelona for the World Junior Championships, and I set the national record for the girls’ 1,500 meters in doing so. And so Alberto actually had watched my race and was just really impressed and ended up calling up my family’s house and saying that he was interested in helping me kind of reach the next level and coaching me from afar originally.

MARTIN: So when did it start to go bad for you? I mean, because at this point, you – what I hear you saying is that, you know, running was fun. It was something you did because it was fun, and you were good at it. So when did you start to feel that something’s not right here?

CAIN: Really, the biggest turning point was when I moved out to Portland. You know, hindsight’s 20-20, so I can look back and say, oh, you know, there were warning signs even during those years where we had a long-distance coaching relationship. But I was buffered by my family and my friends and this other life that I had just in my hometown, and so running stayed fun. But as soon as I went out to Portland and was with the team full-time, things started to break down.

MARTIN: One of the things that you talked about in your piece for The Times was that – you made several points. One is that they would weigh you in front of other people. And, you know, tell me why that strikes you as so wrong.

CAIN: I think one of the biggest things for me during that experience was that some of the athletes he was weighing me in front of were my direct competitors. Not only were they teammates, but they were women that I was actually competing against in order to qualify for World Championship teams and Olympic teams. And just having, like, a direct competitor look at me as failing, I think, was, from an athlete perspective, so mortifying.

But then from a personal issue, I was an 18-year-old girl. We live in a society in which female weight is both fetishized and also under so much scrutiny. And so trying to shame somebody into losing weight is just such, I mean, an emotionally, psychologically and mentally traumatizing way to coach somebody.

MARTIN: You had other health effects, as I recall from your piece. You didn’t get your period for three years. Explain again why not getting your period for three years is a problem.

CAIN: Absolutely. So if you lose your period for an extended period of time, then you’re at risk to developing health issues, including bone problems. So when your estrogen levels drop – estrogen helps bone development. And when you’re in these very vulnerable years such as your teenage years, early 20s, you are still growing. You are still developing. And so if you put your bone health at risk, you can develop weak bones.

And there’s many women who are in this sport who have developed osteoporosis and osteopenia and, as a result, end up breaking their bones a lot. And I was on track to have a lot of really long-term health problems because my bone density did start to drop.

MARTIN: You said at some point that you became suicidal and that you actually started cutting yourself. Did you talk to the coaches about that? And when you did – or if you did – what did they say?

CAIN: So the man who was representing himself as a sports psychologist – he actually witnessed me cutting myself a couple times, and he never directed me to a medical professional for help. Instead, he just said pretty much the jargon of toughen up. You know, you shouldn’t do that.

And I ended up – after one particularly bad experience where I honestly just completely blew up and tried to make myself throw up and was cutting myself and just really traumatized after one particular race in which my coach had told me that I was five pounds too heavy and that’s why I ran bad, I told both Alberto and Darren Treasure, who was our sport psych, that, like, I didn’t know what to do. Like, I knew I was on a self-destructive path. I was really scared.

And I’m sorry. I’m starting to get a little emotional. But I think, you know, looking back at that time, I feel so bad for that girl. And I’m so happy that I’m not her anymore. But I know there’s so many people out there right now who are going through similar stuff, and that so breaks my heart.

And it’s so scary to think that I could sit in that room, and those two men could just say they wanted to go to sleep and didn’t want to talk about it more. And I was asking them for help in the lowest of all moments for me, and they didn’t want to hear it. They didn’t want to help me. I mean, honestly, they just insinuated I was being too emotional and needed to get over it.

MARTIN: How did it finally stop? How did you finally get out of that situation?

CAIN: So after that sit-down with my coach and the sports psych, I called my parents, and I admitted that I had been trying to make myself throw up and that I needed their help. And so I ended up going home. And, you know, honestly, my parents looked on in horror and tried to get me all the help that I could get during this time. But it’s been a process – one that I’m happy to say I’m on – I feel I’m almost fully out of. But, I mean, God, it’s taken years.

MARTIN: You know, it’s interesting because after you spoke out, a number of people responded on Twitter and through other means. But basically, you know, Twitter’s what’s available to us. And…

CAIN: Yeah.

MARTIN: A number of people came forward to validate your experiences. They either said that they had been treated similarly or they said that they had seen the behavior. They had witnessed it. And a number of them expressed regret that they didn’t do more to intervene.

But also – well, Nike also has, as I’m sure you know, released a statement. While saying your allegations are deeply troubling, they claim that you never raised them before or that your parents did not raise them before and that they also say that you were seeking to rejoin the project and Salazar’s team as recently as April of this year, and you didn’t raise these concerns. Can you speak to that?

CAIN: Yeah, absolutely. In regards to the Nike statement, I was honestly so horrified and disappointed that this giant billion-dollar corporation was going to come out and try to discredit or blame me or shame me in some sort of way. Why is their first reaction to defend this coach?

MARTIN: Alberto Salazar, who, as you’ve noted, has, in fact, been banned for four years because of anti-doping violations. But Salazar wrote to The Oregonian when your allegations became public. And he says that, I never encouraged her or, worse yet, shamed her to maintain an unhealthy weight. And he says that you struggled to find and maintain your ideal performance and training weight. Do you want to respond to that?

CAIN: Yeah. Honestly, when I read that, I just laughed. And I honestly just laughed in probably the most, you know, almost freaky way I could because I was, like, he still probably looks at me as a big girl and blames me for not hitting the weight that he, for some reason, thought was my ideal body weight.

MARTIN: You know, after all this, I mean, this was something you loved. You loved running. You ran…

CAIN: Yeah.

MARTIN: …Because it was fun, you know? Do you think you’ll ever run again?

CAIN: Yeah. I haven’t stopped (laughter). I’m still running. I’m still training. I hope to be racing in the next couple of months. The truth is the reason that I have been off the circuit for as long as I have is because I’ve been dealing with the health implications of everything that happened. So I’ve suffered quite a few injuries due to lowered bone density. It’s only been in the last year where I’ve been finally able to maintain a string of health, and my bones are stronger. And I’m feeling good, and I’m just honestly having fun with it again.

And I know I will run for the rest of my life because the actual act and art and feeling of running I love, and I hope to compete on a high level. I hope to be out there showing people that you can come back from really tough, awful times. And so hopefully, you’ll see me out there in 2020 on the track.

MARTIN: That was middle-distance runner Mary Cain talking to us from New York.

Mary Cain, thank you so much for talking with us. I hope we’ll talk again.

CAIN: Yeah. Thank you so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE HUNTER AND SCOTT AMENDOLA’S “GHOST MALL”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business November 17, 2019

19-Hour London To Sydney ‘Test Flight’ Shows How To Make Long Hauls Tolerable

Australian airline Qantas is exploring new nonstop flights that would be the world’s longest — but 19-plus hours on a plane can be taxing for those on board.

Qantas


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Qantas

Passengers on board Qantas flight 7879 took off from London early Thursday morning and arrived in Sydney a bit after noon on Friday — 19 hours and 19 minutes in the air.

So how do you keep people on board from going crazy — or getting deep-vein thrombosis — while they’re cooped up that long?

The Australian airline’s approach on the 11,000 mile flight was to design the meals and lighting carefully, get passengers out of their seats, and focus on the remarkable: two sunrises in one day.

In addition to Sydney, Qantas is exploring a number of new nonstop flight routes that would be longer than any currently operating, including from New York and London to Melbourne and Brisbane. And so, the 52 people on board – largely employees of the airline, along with some journalists – were guinea pigs.

Last month, Qantas landed the first nonstop commercial airline flight from New York to Sydney. That flight took 19 hours, 16 minutes. The carrier says that flight saved passengers three hours over the normal routing, which includes a stop.

Replay yesterday’s record-breaking non-stop flight from @HeathrowAirport to @SydneyAirport by @Qantas as part of their #ProjectSunrise test flights. And learn more about what happens aboard the test flights. https://t.co/pCazPpvn6P #QF7879 pic.twitter.com/LJKD7TDygD

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) November 15, 2019

Jet-lag researchers at the University of Sydney put into practice a number of strategies on the flight related to light, food, and exercise.

To help the body to adjust to the time difference, light in the cabin was correlated to Sydney time as soon as the flight took off. So though the plane took off at 6 a.m. in London, dinner was served and the lights were soon turned down.

Meals were designed to produce specific effects. Dinner was a carb-heavy steak sandwich, easy on the spice, intended to lull passengers to sleep. Drinks were offered, too — on the previous nonstop test flight between New York and Sydney, 38% of passengers said they drank alcohol to hasten sleep (though alcohol can be especially dehydrating on such extended flights).

A carb-heavy dinner is designed to be soporific.

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Qantas

And passengers were guided to exercise: walking in a circuit around the plane and doing stretches. That part was made easier than on a typical flight, since the plane was mostly empty.

To test the flight’s impact and measure efforts to make it less taxing, test passengers wore activity monitors, kept logs of how they felt, and played a “whack-a-mole” game on an iPad to test their reaction time and attentiveness.

Pilots and cabin crew wore activity monitors and kept sleep diaries. Pilots wore EEG monitors to track their brain activity and alertness, and gave urine samples so their melatonin levels could be used to indicate their body clock status.

The London to Sydney route was flown commercially once before, along a different route in 1989, with just 23 passengers. The longest flight currently operating is Singapore Airlines’ nonstop from Singapore to Newark, which takes 18.5 hours.

The researchers’ tactics seemed to help aboard the new Boeing 787-9 aircraft.

“I feel really well,” test passenger Andy Chevis told Reuters during the descent. “Probably a lot better than I normally would at this point in the flight.”

Unfortunately, it seems that even the most cutting-edge science can’t change that most human of desires: the wish to land.

By hour 17, reported CNN’s Richard Quest, there was “a palpable sense that people are keen to see the end of the flight. They want off as soon as possible.”

Qantas began offering a nonstop London-Perth flight last year; the company says the route has won its highest levels of customer satisfaction and has made its service to London profitable for the first time in 10 years. The cost for one such upcoming roundtrip flight is $1,087. It’s not clear what the pricing will be for the routes the airline is testing now.

The airline says it expects decide whether to go forward with the super-long-haul routes by the end of 2019, with a goal of launching the nonstop routes by 2022.

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Health November 17, 2019

A Young Immigrant Has Mental Illness, And That’s Raising His Risk of Being Deported

José’s son, who has schizophrenia, recently got into a fight that resulted in a broken window — an out-of-control moment from his struggle with mental illness. And it could increase his chances of deportation to a country where mental health care is even more elusive.

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Hokyoung Kim for NPR

When José moved his family to the United States from Mexico nearly two decades ago, he had hopes of giving his children a better life.

But now he worries about the future of his 21-year-old-son, who has lived in central Illinois since he was a toddler. José’s son has a criminal record, which could make him a target for deportation officials. We’re not using the son’s name because of those risks, and are using the father’s middle name, José, because both men are in the U.S. without permission.

José’s son was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder last year and has faced barriers to getting affordable treatment, in part because he doesn’t have legal status. His untreated condition has led to scrapes with the law.

Mental health advocates say many people with untreated mental illness run the risk of cycling in and out of the criminal justice system, and the situation is particularly fraught for those without legal status.

“If he gets deported he’d practically be lost in Mexico, because he doesn’t know Mexico,” says José, speaking through an interpreter. “I brought him here very young and, with his illness, where is he going to go? He’s likely to end up on the street.”

Legal troubles

José’s son has spent several weeks in jail and numerous days in court over the past year.

On the most recent occasion, the young man sat nervously in the front row of a courtroom in the Champaign County courthouse. Wearing a white button-down shirt and dress pants, his hair parted neatly, he stared at the floor while he waited for the judge to enter.

That day, he pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of property damage. The incident took place at his parents’ house earlier that year. He had gotten into a fight with his brother-in-law and broke a window. His father says it was yet another out-of-control moment from his son’s recent struggles with mental illness.

Before beginning proceedings, the judge read a warning aloud — something that is now standard practice to make sure noncitizens are aware that they could face deportation (or be denied citizenship or re-entry to the U.S.) if they plead guilty in court.

The young man received 12 months’ probation.

After the hearing, he agreed to an interview.

Just a couple of years ago, he says, his life was good: He was living on his own, working, and taking classes at community college. But all that changed when he started hearing voices and began struggling to keep his grip on reality. He withdrew from his friends and family, including his dad.

One time, he began driving erratically, thinking his car was telling him what to do. A month after that episode, he started having urges to kill himself and sometimes felt like hurting others.

In 2018, he was hospitalized twice, and finally got diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

José says that during this time, his son — who had always been respectful and kind — grew increasingly argumentative and even threatened to hurt his parents. The psychiatric hospitalizations didn’t seem to make a difference.

“He asked us for help, but we didn’t know how to help him,” José says. “He’d say, ‘Dad, I feel like I’m going crazy.’ “

José’s son says he met with a therapist a few times and was taking the medication he was prescribed in the hospital. He was also using marijuana to cope, he says.

The prescribed medication helped, he says, but without insurance, he couldn’t afford to pay the $180 monthly cost. When he stopped the meds, he struggled, and continued getting into trouble with the police.

Undocumented and uninsured

For people who are both undocumented and living with a mental illness, the situation is “particularly excruciating,” says Carrie Chapman, an attorney and advocate with the Legal Council for Health Justice in Chicago, who represents many clients like José’s son.

“If you have a mental illness that makes it difficult for you to control behaviors, you can end up in the criminal justice system,” Chapman says.

People with mental illness make up only a small percentage of violent offenders — they are actually more likely, compared to the general population, to be a victim of a violent crime.

Chapman says the stakes are extremely high when people without legal status enter the criminal justice system: they risk getting deported to a country where they may not speak the language, or where it’s even more difficult to obtain quality mental health care.

“It could be a death sentence for them there,” Chapman says. “It’s an incredible crisis, that such a vulnerable young person with serious mental illness falls through the cracks.”

An estimated 4.1 million adults under the age of 65 who live in the U.S. are ineligible for Medicaid or marketplace coverage under the Affordable Care Act because of their immigration status, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Among them are those who are undocumented and other immigrants who otherwise do not fall into one of the federal categories as lawfully in the U.S. People who are protected from deportation through the federal government’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, also are ineligible for coverage under those programs.

For many people in all those groups, affordable health care is out of reach.

Some states have opened up access to Medicaid to undocumented children, including Illinois, California, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia, according to the National State Conference of Legislatures. But they lose that coverage at age 19, except in California, which recently expanded eligibility through age 25.

For those who can’t get access to affordable health insurance because of their undocumented status, medical care is largely limited to emergency services and treatments covered by charity care or provided by community health centers.

It’s unclear how many people have been deported because of issues linked to mental illness; good records are not available, says Talia Inlender, an attorney for immigrants’ rights with the Los Angeles-based pro bono law firm Public Counsel. But estimates from the ACLU suggest that tens of thousands of immigrants deported each year have a mental disability.

Inlender, who represents people who have mental health disabilities in deportation hearings, says when the lack of access to community-based treatment eventually leads to a person being detained in an immigration facility, that person risks further deterioration because many facilities are not equipped to provide the needed care.

On top of that, she says, immigrants facing deportation in most states don’t generally have a right to public counsel during the removal proceedings and have to represent themselves. Inlender points out that an immigrant with a mental disability could be particularly vulnerable without the help of a lawyer.

(Following a class-action lawsuit, the states of Washington, California and Arizona did establish a right to counsel for immigrants with mental illness facing deportation. For those in other states, there’s a federal program that tries to provide the same right to counsel, but it’s only for detained immigrants who have been properly screened.)

Medicaid for more people?

Chapman and other advocates for immigrants’ rights say expanding Medicaid to cover everyone who otherwise qualifies — regardless of legal status — and creating a broader pathway to U.S. citizenship would be good first steps toward helping people like José’s son.

“Everything else is kind of a ‘spit and duct tape’ attempt by families and advocates to get somebody what they need,” Chapman says.

Critics of the push to expand Medicaid to cover more undocumented people object to the costs, and argue that the money should be spent, instead, on those living in the country legally. (California’s move to expand Medicaid through age 25 will cost the state around $98 million, according to some estimates.)

As for José’s son, he recently found a pharmacy that offers a cheaper version of the prescription drug he needs to treat his mental health condition — so he’s back on medication and feeling better.

He now works as a landscaper and hopes to get back to college someday to study business. But he fears his criminal record could stand in the way of those goals, and he’s aware that his history makes him a target for immigration sweeps.

José says his greatest fear is that his son will end up back in Mexico — away from family and friends, in a country he knows little about.

“There are thousands of people going through these issues … and they’re in the same situation,” José says. “They’re in the dark, not knowing what to do, where to go, or who to ask for help.”

This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Side Effects Public Media, Illinois Public Media and Kaiser Health News. Christine Herman is a recipient of a Rosalynn Carter fellowship for mental health journalism. Follow her on Twitter: @CTHerman

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Sports November 16, 2019

University Of Colorado’s Live Buffalo Mascot To Retire Because She Runs Too Fast

Ralphie V, mascot of the Colorado Buffaloes, is led onto the field before the team’s game against the Arizona Wildcats at Folsom Field on Oct. 5 in Boulder, Colo.

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After 12 seasons of leading the University of Colorado Boulder’s football team onto the field, Ralphie V, the 13-year-old, 1,200-pound buffalo, is officially retiring as the school’s mascot.

The reason? The athletic department says she’s too fast.

“With past Ralphies, as they aged, their speed typically decreased; with Ralphie V, she has been so excited to run that she was actually running too fast, which created safety concerns for her and her handlers,” according to press release from the university.

“She also wasn’t consistently responding to cues from her handlers,” the press release continued. “And her temperament was such that she was held back from leading the team out for CU’s last two home games against USC and Stanford.”

The Ralphie tradition goes back to 1934 at CU and has evolved over the years. This is the 53rd season that a live buffalo has led the team out on the field. Ralphie V retires as the second-longest-serving Ralphie in the program’s history running a total of 76 times. The original Ralphie ran 78 games over 12 seasons, according to the press release.

“As one of the biggest and fastest Ralphies, her love for running and power was showcased every home game during her career,” John Graves, Ralphie Program manager since 2015 and a one-time handler said in a statement. “It’s almost like she knew she was the queen of campus, and she loved to show that fact off when she ran onto the field and at her public appearances.”

Ralphies run the field with a group of CU volunteer handlers, who are all varsity student-athletes. It’s a physically demanding job; handlers have to train and practice five days a week to stay in physical shape to keep up with the buffalo.

CU’s Ralphies are beloved by students and often called one of the best live mascots in college sports.

But not everyone is a fan of these types of mascots, and the question of using animals in this way has come up recently.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says live-animal mascots score an “F.”

“Regardless of the length of time that they’re kept in captivity, lions, tigers, bears, and other exotic animals don’t ‘get used to’ being in public settings,” an article on the organization’s website says.

Earlier this year, PETA called on the University of Texas and the University of Georgia to end their use of live mascots after an incident where Bevo, the Texas Longhorns mascot, charged Uga, the Georgia Bulldogs dog mascot, before the teams’ bowl game matchup.

“It’s indefensible to subject animals to the stress of being packed up, carted from state to state, and paraded in front of a stadium full of screaming fans,” PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange said in a statement.

PETA suggests universities use “costumed human mascots” instead.

“It’s no surprise that a skittish steer would react to a perceived threat by charging, and PETA is calling on the University of Texas and the University of Georgia to learn from this dangerous incident, retire their live-animal mascots, and stick to the talented costumed mascots who can lead cheers, react to the crowd, and pump up the team,” Lange said.

Still in good health, Ralphie V will spend her retirement on a ranch under the care of the program. Her handlers keep the location a secret, so fans don’t overwhelm her and so opposing fans don’t find out and harass or kidnap her, The Washington Post reports.

The university has been preparing for her replacement and officials are currently in the process of identifying potential candidates for their next mascot, who will be named Ralphie VI.

Ralphie V’s final appearance will be during Colorado’s final home game against Washington on Nov. 23, but she won’t be running. She’ll be a spectator in her pen, according to university officials.

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Business November 16, 2019

Apple Bans Vaping-Related Apps

Apple has removed 181 vaping-related apps from its App Store. The move comes amid growing concern over the health effects of e-cigarettes and the rise of vaping-related illnesses among young people.



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Apple has removed 181 apps related to vaping from its App Store. The company says it’s concerned about growing evidence of the health risks of e-cigarettes, especially to young people. NPR’s tech correspondent Shannon Bond has more.

SHANNON BOND, BYLINE: Vaping is on the rise, and so are smartphone apps connected to e-cigarettes. You can’t buy actual vaping products on the App Store, but these apps allow people to interact with their e-cigarettes. They can make them hotter or change the color they light up. If someone loses a vape pen, an app can help or find it. And vapers can talk to each other on dedicated social networks.

MATTHEW MYERS: It’s one of the ways that the industry has made this product uniquely appealing to teenagers and young adults.

BOND: Matthew Myers is president of the Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids, which has been urging tech companies to ban videos, pictures and apps related to vaping.

MYERS: The availability of apps, as well as social media and online sales and YouTube, is one of the key contributors to the perception of young people that these products are safe, that they’re cool and that they’re something the young people should be doing.

BOND: For Myers and other public health advocates, Apple’s ban is a big victory. In explaining its decision, the company pointed to mounting evidence that vaping is harmful to health. It said vaping is, quote, “a public health crisis and a youth epidemic,” citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Heart Association. Apple says it’s particularly concerned about its youngest customers. More than a quarter of U.S. high school students said they vaped in the past month, according to a recent government survey.

The vape pen company Pax makes an app that lets users lock their vape pens, control temperature and flavor. But it’s no longer available in the App Store. Pax declined to comment on Apple’s ban. For people who have already downloaded the banned apps to their iPhones, they’ll still be able to use them and can move the apps to new devices. And that means young people will also still be able to use these smartphone apps if they already have them.

Shannon Bond, NPR News, San Francisco.

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Business November 15, 2019

Nissan Is Recalling Nearly 400,000 Vehicles Over Potential Fire Hazard

Nissan says it is recalling nearly 400,000 vehicles in the U.S. that pose a potential fire danger because of a braking system defect.

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Nissan is recalling nearly 400,000 vehicles in the U.S. because of a braking system defect that could cause them to catch fire. Owners are advised to park affected vehicles outside and away from structures if the anti-lock brake system warning light comes on for more than 10 seconds.

The Japanese automaker says a pump seal may become worn down and cause brake fluid to leak. “If the warning is ignored … the brake fluid leak may potentially create an electrical short in the actuator circuit, which in rare instances, may lead to a fire,” the company says in documents sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The recall affects four different models in the U.S.: the Nissan Murano SUV, model years 2015 to 2018; Maxima sedans, model years 2016 to 2018; and the Infiniti QX60 and Nissan Pathfinder SUVs, model years 2017 to 2019.

Nissan says in a statement emailed to NPR that it is working on a fix and that owners of affected vehicles will be notified beginning in early December 2019. “Once the remedy is available, owners will receive a final notification letter asking them to bring their vehicle to an authorized Nissan dealer or INFINITI retailer to have the remedy work completed at no cost for parts or labor,” the company says.

This isn’t the first time Nissan has had problems with brake fluid leaks. Last year, for example, Nissan recalled more than 215,000 vehicles. The automaker says vehicles in the 2018 recall that haven’t been repaired are included in the current recall.

The documents Nissan sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration do not state whether the brake system defect has caused any fires or injuries.

However, a NHTSA database of complaints from vehicle owners contained several unconfirmed reports of problems with leaks in the anti-lock brake system. One complaint from Sierra Vista, Ariz., said that a 2017 Nissan Maxima “ignited and exploded” less than a month after it was purchased. According to the owner, insurance investigators said it happened because brake fluid leaked onto the circuit board.

Earlier this year, Nissan North America recalled 1.2 million vehicles because the reverse camera could be adjusted so that the monitor appeared blank, which violates U.S. safety standards.

Paolo Zialcita is an intern with NPR’s News Desk.

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