September 2019 – Page 164

Trump’s Ban on E-Cigarette Flavors Endangers Public Health

Today President Donald Trump announced that his administration plans to ban the sale of e-cigarettes in flavors other than tobacco, a move that will undermine public health in the name of promoting it. The ban, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will impose through regulatory “guidance” it plans to issue soon, will dramatically reduce the harm-reducing alternatives available to smokers who are interested in quitting and is likely to drive many people who have already made that switch back to a much more dangerous source of nicotine.

The flavor ban is aimed at preventing underage vaping, which increased sharply last year. “We are going to have to do something about it,” Trump told reporters, describing vaping by teenagers as “a new problem in the country.”

Yet in terms of numbers and health consequences, the main impact of the ban will be felt by the millions of adults who have used e-cigarettes to quit smoking. Those adult vapers overwhelmingly prefer the flavors that the FDA plans to ban, and many of them, deprived of the products they are now using, are apt to start smoking again, dramatically increasing the health risks they face. The upshot will be more smoking-related disease and death.

Since selling e-cigarettes to minors is already illegal, a more reasonable approach would have been to improve enforcement of age restrictions. Companies such as Juul, the leading e-cigarette maker, have already taken steps in that direction through robust age verification. If some retailers are still selling e-cigarettes to minors, a logical response would have been to crack down on them. Instead the Trump administration is depriving adults of potentially lifesaving products that seem to be nearly twice as effective in facilitating smoking cessation as alternatives such as nicotine gum and patches.

Trump seems to have been influenced by his wife, Melania, who recently tweeted that “we need to do all we can to protect the public from tobacco-related disease and death, and prevent e-cigarettes from becoming an on-ramp to nicotine addiction for a generation of youth.” Yet the flavor ban will undermine that first goal by eliminating the vast majority of the vaping products that provide nicotine without tobacco or combustion. Since the availability of e-cigarettes seems to have accelerated the long-term decline in smoking, the flavor ban can be expected to slow that trend or even reverse it.

The FDA has repeatedly acknowledged the enormous harm-reducing potential of e-cigarettes. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb openly agonized about the tradeoff between broad restrictions aimed at preventing underage consumption and the interests of smokers who want to quit or have already done so with the help of e-cigarettes. This decision gives no weight to those interests. The only consolation is that Trump’s announcement takes the shine off Michael Bloomberg’s latest crusade.

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Retail Sales Shock: BofA Card Data Shows Plunge In August Spending

With the August payrolls report widely seen as disappointing, with less than 100k private payrolls added (despite accelerate wage growth), the last data point the Fed is waiting for to cement next week’s 25bps rate cut is this Friday’s retail sales data (assuming tomorrow’s CPI report is not a shock).

Luckily for the Fed, it appears that the August retail sales number is set to be the latest evidence of America’s rapid slowdown, if only based on Bank of America credit and debit card data, which shows that after a strong month of spending in July, consumers aggressively tightened the strings of their wallets in August.

Specifically, BAC found that retail sales ex-autos fell 0.5% month-over-month, which reversed the 0.9% gain in July, and was not only the first monthly contraction since February this year, but was also the biggest monthly drop in 2019.

As BofA details, in August, spending for only 5 out of the 14 sectors increased in the month, led by strength in cruises and airlines. This was likely boosted by summer vacations, which usually take place in August. On the flip side, spending at clothing stores saw a 1.9% mom contraction accompanied by a 1.6% drop in gas stations. Luxury and department stores also posted losses. On a % yoy basis, 7 sectors posted negative growth. Excluding spending at gas stations, which is largely impacted by gas prices, spending at department stores continue to post the biggest % yoy loss, at -4.6%.

What was behind the sharp drop off in late-summer spending?

According to BofA, Amazon Prime Day and other retailers’ summer promotions in mid-July provided a significant boost to spending, in effect pulling forward consumer demand from the future, into July and out of August. Focusing specifically on discretionary spending categories likely impacted by the promotions, the bank’s economists found that it increased 1.7% mom in July but tumbled 1.4% in August

Outside of the promotion distortions, and more ominously, spending was likely dampened by overall weakening sentiment. As reported previously, the latest University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey found that consumer sentiment in August fell by the most since 2012 and the third biggest since the recovery started.

Also, BofA’s own proprietary “Word from Main Street” index showed that the BofAML US consumer confidence indicator (USCCI) dropped in recent weeks, tumbling to the lowest level in years. It briefly dipped below the 50% breakeven level before rebounding, signifying that respondents, on balance, are more pessimistic. BofA suspects that the drop in sentiment left consumers a bit more hesitant to spend this month.

On the other hand, boosting consumer spending this month was Hurricane Dorian. The storm was expected to hit the shores of Florida, prompting people to prepare for the storm, stocking up on essentials. To this end, BofA saw a particularly large increase in spending in Florida in the last few days of the month. Indeed, the Hurricane-related spending added 0.2-0.3% to aggregated retail sales ex-autos. In other words, if not for proactive hurricane-related spending, aggregate retail sales would have been even worse, down 0.7-0.8% in August.

The bottom line: BofA card spending data show that August was a difficult month for the retailers, and the bank expects to similarly see a weak retail sales report from the Census Bureau on Friday.

Finally, confirming the sorry state of US consumer finances, today WalletHub released a report, which found that consumers racked up $35.6 billion in credit card debt during Q2 2019 – the largest second-quarter build-up ever. The $35.6 billion in additional Q2 credit card debt is 64% higher than the Q2 2018 paydown.

Incidentally, this finding was confirmed by the Fed’s own consumer credit report earlier this week which found that revolving credit in July soared by over $10 billion – the most since Nov 2017 – to the highest level on record.

Yet while one month does not make a trend and consumer spending may still remain strong on the year – recall that last week, Morgan Stanley said that the Only Question That Matters Now: “Will The US Consumer Hold Up” – BofA advises keeping a close eye on confidence measures as they will be critical to determining the willingness of the consumer to continue to spend.

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/11/2019 – 14:23

T.Boone Pickens Dead At 91

T. Boone Pickens, the onetime Texas oil wildcatter turned corporate raider who became a billionaire energy investor and television pitchman for wind and natural-gas power, has died aged 91.

Bloomberg reports that he died Wednesday at his home of natural causes, according to the Dallas Morning News.

His primary residence was in Dallas. Pickens posted a message on his LinkedIn page announcing he had “several strokes” late in 2016 and then had a “Texas-sized fall” requiring hospital treatment.

He said he was still mentally strong but in declining health, adding, “I clearly am in the fourth quarter.”

In his later years, he shut his hedge fund and decided to invest instead in “personal passions like promoting unbridled entrepreneurship and philanthropic and political endeavors.”

After his marriage ended in divorce Pickens married Beatrice Carr Stuart in 1972. That marriage ended in divorce, as did his third marriage, to Nelda Cain, and his fourth, to Madeleine Paulson, the widow of Allen Paulson, founder of Gulfstream Aerospace.

Pickens’ fifth marriage was to Toni Brinker, widow of Norman Brinker, who turned Chili’s Grill and Bar restaurants into a national chain.

He had five children: Pam, Michael, Tom, Liz and Deborah.

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/11/2019 – 14:16

Elizabeth Warren Issues Misleading Claim That Three Industries Are Responsible for 70 Percent of Carbon Pollution

Elizabeth Warren claims three industries are responsible for 70 percent of carbon pollution. One of those industries is…”industry.”

Any time a politician makes an argument using a single, simple statistic, it is worth investigating its origins. That is especially true when that politician is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.).

Take, for example, her claim at last week’s CNN town hall on climate change that 70 percent of airborne carbon pollution comes from three industries. Warren made this argument in response to a question about whether the government should tell people which lightbulbs they have to use.

“This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry hopes we’re all talking about,” she said. “They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, straws, and cheeseburgers when 70% of the pollution of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air comes from three industries.” Because this is 2019, Warren also posted the claim on Instagram.

So, which three industries are to blame? The helpful fact-checkers at Politifact looked into this question and found the source of Warren’s statistic.

It does not show that three industries are to blame.

Instead, Warren’s claim comes from an Environmental Protection Agency’s document stating that more than 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions can be traced to three sources. The first is “transportation,” which accounts for about 29 percent of emissions. The second is “electricity production,” which accounts for about 27 percent.

You may have noticed that these are both activities, not industries. Transportation, in particular, encompasses a variety of different economic sectors, from trucking and freight rail to personal air travel and driving—which is to say, the sort of individual consumer economic decisions that Warren says are a distraction.

You may be thinking: This is just quibbling. But then we come to the third category, which accounts for about 22 percent of emissions. And this is where things get weird. The third category is just…”industry.” All of it.

“Industry,” I think it is fair to say, is not an industry. If just three industries are responsible for all carbon emissions, then “industry”—the catch-all term for the entirety of industrial activity in the country—cannot be one of them.

Warren’s campaign has been more careful about characterizing the sources of carbon emissions in other forums. But it’s still telling that this was how Warren chose to frame the issue in a major cable news forum and that her team made the decision to re-post the moment on social media. And it is representative of a tendency of Warren’s that I explored at length in the latest issue of Reason: It is a framing that, while based in a legitimate source, is presented in a way that seems designed to mislead for political convenience.

In this case, her characterization is presumably intended to leave the impression that the bulk of emissions come from a few powerful bad actors, that the only people who would be affected by her energy plans would be rich industrialists with well-waxed mustaches who own large buildings with menacing smokestacks. In Warren’s telling, they are the ones who will be hurt, rather than, say, ordinary people driving cars and heating their homes and buying light bulbs and perhaps even hoping to enjoy hamburgers or tasty beverages with straws that do not crumple into damp napkins when you use them. It was Warren’s way of implying, without quite saying so, that this won’t really affect you.

As John Reilly, the co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, told Politifact, Warren’s response “may lead to the implication that the cost of reducing these emissions will fall on industry. To the extent that myth is perpetuated, that is a problem. One way or another, we will all bear the cost of doing things differently.”

Indeed, it is worth noticing what Warren did not say—whether the government has a role in regulating which light bulbs consumers use. She called this question, and others like it, distractions. But if anything, it is Warren’s own response that appears to have been constructed to distract from the issue at hand.

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Michael Bloomberg’s Anti-Vaping Crusade Is Objectively Pro-Tobacco

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire busybody who can be counted on to oppose individual freedom in almost every area of life, is launching a prohibition crusade against flavored e-cigarettes. In a New York Times op-ed piece co-authored by Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Bloomberg argues that “banning flavored e-cigarettes is the most important thing we can do to reduce use among young people.”

If by “important” Bloomberg and Myers mean “emotionally satisfying to puritanical paternalists,” they are absolutely right. But if they mean that banning flavored e-cigarettes is a reasonable response to underage vaping, that it respects the choices of adult consumers, or even that it is good for public health, they could not be more wrong.

The premise of Bloomberg’s $160 million campaign, which aims to persuade “at least 20 cities and states” to “pass laws banning all flavored tobacco and e-cigarettes,” is that flavored e-liquids are obviously designed to entice “children,” because only children like them. That is demonstrably false.

Juul is the leading e-cigarette brand, accounting for three-quarters of the market at the end of 2018. Last year, Vaping360, a site aimed at former smokers who have switched to vaping and current smokers who are thinking about it, surveyed readers about their favorite Juul pod flavors. It got more than 38,000 responses, and the top pick by far was Mango (46 percent), followed by Cool Mint (29 percent), Crème Brulée (11 percent), and Fruit Medley (8 percent). Virginia Tobacco, which is technically also a flavor but perhaps would be tolerated by the bans that Bloomberg is pushing, was favored by only 6 percent of respondents.

Another 2018 survey, expressly limited to respondents 18 and older and including not just Juul but all vaping products, yielded similar results. When asked what flavors they were using regularly, just 8 percent of the respondents said “tobacco,” while 83 percent said “fruit,” 71 percent mentioned flavors in the “dessert/pastry/bakery” category, 13 percent said “menthol,” and 10 percent picked “mint/wintergreen.” In this sample of 69,000 adult vapers, 81 percent described themselves as former smokers, 13 percent were still smoking, and 5 percent had never smoked. Among the former smokers, 75 percent had started vaping when they quit.

Surveys of former smokers find that flavor variety plays an important role in the process of switching to vaping. The Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged “the role that flavors…may play in helping some smokers switch to potentially less harmful forms of nicotine delivery.”

In the name of saving “America’s children,” Bloomberg wants to ban the e-cigarette flavors overwhelmingly preferred by adults who have switched from smoking to vaping, a far less dangerous source of nicotine. The predictable result is that many of those vapers will start smoking again, dramatically increasing the health risks they face.

Trying to divert attention from the adults who will be harmed by the bans they support, Bloomberg and Myers claim “tobacco companies” are “making huge investments in nicotine-loaded e-cigarettes and selling them in a rainbow of sweet and fruity flavors,” including “cotton candy” and “gummy bear.” That is “simply not true,” notes Boston University public health professor Michael Siegel, an advocate of e-cigarettes as a harm-reducing alternative to the conventional kind. “There are four major brands of electronic cigarettes that are sold, at least in part, by tobacco companies: Juul, blu, Logic, and Vuse,” Siegel writes. “While each of these brands has flavored e-liquids or pods, none of them sells gummy bear or cotton candy flavors.”

Bloomberg and Myers also refer to “cotton-candy-flavored pods for Juul devices.” Contrary to the impression they are trying to create, Juul does not sell cotton-candy-flavored pods. Other manufacturers do offer cotton-candy-flavored pods that are compatible with Juul, but those suppliers are not tobacco companies. Nor are the companies that sell gummy-bear-flavored e-liquid for refillable vaporizers.

Adults certainly should be allowed to buy such e-liquids if they like them. But by emphasizing those juvenile-sounding flavors and falsely linking them to “tobacco companies,” Bloomberg and Myers are reinforcing their mendacious message that e-cigarettes are nothing but a blatant attempt by Big Tobacco to get your kids hooked on nicotine, while completely ignoring the role these products seem to have played in accelerating the downward trend in smoking.

Equally misleading is Bloomberg’s attempt to blame the recent outbreak of respiratory illnesses in vapers, the vast majority of which are linked to black-market THC products, on legal e-cigarettes that deliver nicotine. “Federal health officials announced on Friday that vaping could be the cause of at least 450 possible cases of severe lung disease—with five confirmed deaths—in 33 states,” Bloomberg and Myers write. “Many of the affected people are teenagers.” What does that have to do with their efforts to stop former smokers and smokers who are interested in quitting from buying legal e-cigarettes in the flavors they demonstrably prefer? As far as we can tell, absolutely nothing.

“By the CDC’s own admission,” Siegel notes, “80 percent of the cases have been tied to vaping illicit marijuana/THC cartridges, not legal e-cigarettes. It is disingenuous and, frankly, dishonest to suggest to the public that this terrible outbreak is being caused by e-cigarettes, when there is no solid evidence to back up that claim.”

Unfortunately, New York Times reporter Vivian Wang, instead of clarifying this point, reinforces the confusion that Bloomberg is trying to foster. The launch of Bloomberg’s campaign to ban flavored e-cigarettes, she says, “was among a series of developments meant to heighten pressure and scrutiny on the vaping industry, amid a sudden and largely unexplained public health scare that has linked vaping to six deaths and hundreds of illnesses.” Throughout the article, Wang conflates legal e-cigarettes, which have been in wide use for years, with the black-market vapes whose potential hazards have been highlighted by the recent reports of lung disease among people who use them.

Even Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who last week announced that she plans to unilaterally impose a statewide ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, did not claim she was responding to the reports of respiratory illnesses. Instead, she presented her ban as a response to the “vaping crisis among youth.” Like Bloomberg, she gave no weight to the interests of adults who are vaping instead of smoking, a habit that is indisputably much more dangerous.

Wang notes that Bloomberg has “committed nearly $1 billion to aid anti-tobacco efforts.” Now he is committing $160 million to pro-tobacco efforts, lobbying for laws that will drastically reduce the alternatives to conventional cigarettes, resulting in more smoking-related disease and death.

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The Risk Of A Flash Crash Is Rising

Authored by Oliver Renick via LinkedIn.com,

Disclaimer: first of all, calm down. I’m not predicting anything. In fact mostly I’m just tying threads together between a bunch of market risks that have been highlighted by many for some time. Early perhaps they were, but not necessarily wrong. As investors become such increasingly one-sided in their macro outlook, these risks become more pronounced.

As stocks rallied last week and the U.S.-China trade itinerary got a nice-sounding update, U.S. economic data continued to beat expectations and is now surprising estimates at a positive rate. One graphic I saw on Twitter caught my eye: SocGen’s take on the biggest event risks, in which they describe the probability and potential scope of a “sharp market repricing” as being low and small.

It’s consistent with what I see elsewhere. There is a view more consensus right now than any I’ve ever seen: the world economy is slowing and the Fed and other central banks will continue cutting rates. Everyone agrees on the basics, they just have different views on how to play it. Among bulls, there is also a strong consensus view that relentless bond-buying momentum is innocuous and central banks will provide an adequate safety net for whatever risks may be associated with the forces behind this market action. Moreover, the general line of thinking I hear is that, even if there is a big bond selloff, stocks will be immune from blowback.

I disagree. A sharp market repricing should be the fattest swan on that diagram.

The greatest risk to investors, the economy, and the tenuous state of geopolitics, is the price of the S&P 500. That does not mean it is the most likely risk — what it means is that the ripple effect of a sizable selloff in stocks right now is monstrous. What’s disconcerting is that it’s remarkably easy to imagine a series of events that by nature should not necessarily pose great risk, but taken together could cause some major shocks to the S&P 500 due to current investor positioning. First, the logic for why the U.S. stock market right now is so pivotal to, well, everything:

1) The U.S. is ostensibly the most stable economy in the world right now.

2) That strength is increasingly tied to the consumer.

3) The most likely cause of imminent U.S. recession is consumer panic about an incoming recession, according to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. We got a taste of this in 4Q18, when a big stock market selloff sent a chill through consumer activity during the holiday season, which led to a big dip in retail sales.

4) If consumer fear is the biggest risk to the economy, and a sharp drop in the stock market would heighten that fear, then a drop in the S&P 500 poses a massive risk to the U.S. economy, and by transition the global economy.

5) President Trump is using the relative strength of the U.S. economy to seek concessions from trading partners, so a sharp drop in the S&P 500 and thus the economy has the potential to upend the entire geopolitical paradigm.

So, of course, the question is, what could make the S&P 500 go down fast enough to precipitate the above? No, it’s not the “everything bubble,” but it is something close; think *broad* short as opposed to *big* short:

1) Almost every major asset class right now is to a varying degree pricing in the assumption that the Fed cuts three times before the end of the year, and that other central banks including the ECB are about to unleash big stimulative measures. Bonds are obviously reflecting this extremely high-consensus view, stock valuations have expanded as a Fed cut-cycle cemented in market expectations, gold bugs are ready for central banks to fire off their last bullet, and bitcoin devotees need the entire economic system to be upended, beginning with central bank futility.

I’ve described this before as the “Fed Fulcrum,” where the pivot point is the market’s assumption that it knows what the Fed and other central banks will do from here: cut, cut, keep cutting, and negative yields will continue to spread around the world. Each asset class depends on this to a varying degree, with bitcoin probably the most levered to this assumption, since bitcoin truly thrives in a Central Bank-free world. Gold at multi-year highs is expecting more and more negative-yielding assets. And stocks either need the Fed cuts to justify their valuation, or earnings to offset multiple contraction in the event of surprisingly hawkish interest-rate policy. Here’s the rough order of Central Bank sensitivity via the Fed Fulcrum:

2) So if the Fed doesn’t cut, or the economy is not as bad as thought, things get bad for some assets and very complicated for others: If the demise of central banks is in fact not imminent, bitcoin will be on life support. If negative yielding assets are near their peak, gold will struggle to maintain its momentum. If the economy doesn’t warrant emergency cuts, Jay Powell may choose to prioritize his institution’s independence over appeasing markets or politicians. And if the Fed doesn’t cut, stock valuations should come under pressure, and price action will depend on whether there is enough pickup in earnings to offset multiple contraction.

Because bond yields are so low, many believe stocks can absolutely absorb a big bond selloff (by virtue of relative yield models). That’s probably true to some extent, but it’s impossible to know how it plays out when some of the most in-demand stocks are those that trade like bonds. Withe the rally in utility and real estate companies lately, the valuation of these companies has surged in 2019:

The implication here is that a bond selloff is going to have a meaningful impact on stocks, even with yields as low as they are. Bond risk is increasingly equivalent to stock risk. And guess what, last week we just had one of the biggest bond selloffs of the decade, and all it took was a juicy trade rumor and a few solid data points from the economy. What if there’s a trade deal or inflation beat?

Yes, I’m aware it sounds crazy to say better-than-expected economic data could wreak market havoc, but it’s not just the actual events that create major market risk: it’s the positioning of investors and the degree of surprise between reality and expectations.

3) Because all these major asset classes are tied to the same event-series, investors who are predominately allocated in stocks, bonds and gold may be in major trouble if trends turn sharply enough to hit them all at once. Hedges won’t work in that scenario, making maneuvering out of these losing assets very difficult. Risk parity strategies and 60/40 portfolios will be in great jeopardy because “cash coming off the sidelines” is not a great saving grace if the sidelines are on fire too. This is probably the most important piece of this puzzle. What’s most likely is that these trades unwind in a more piecemeal, gradual fashion, and thus prevent a major collapse. But if they happen fast…

4) You guessed it: liquidity risk. The possibility that corrections in bonds, stocks, and gold happen concurrently heightens the chances of a December-type event in which the bottom falls out from the market and liquidity runs dry. In an environment where moves are being exacerbated (in both ways), by thin markets, that could mean nauseating swings. Whether or not the “ETF bubble” idea is bogus, what’s true is that this scenario of fewer interest rate cuts is most damaging to high-valuation growth companies, which are the predominance of market-cap weighted indexes. That won’t help.

Finally, if you think robust consumer activity and Beyond Meat up 500% this year mean mom-and-pop retail investors will scoop up on dips, you’re probably wrong. Retail euphoria peaked a long time ago.

If no one’s there to buy because they’ve already bought, hedges don’t work because they’re all tied to the same events, liquidity exacerbates swings and the President realizes his cow-prod is on the verge of breaking, watch out below. It’s a lot of “ifs,” and by definition is unlikely to happen. But the risk is rising the more one-sided the trade becomes.

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/11/2019 – 14:05

Michael Bloomberg’s Anti-Vaping Crusade Is Objectively Pro-Tobacco

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Pittsburgh’s U.S. Attorney Is Lying to Cops and Constituents About the Actual Risks of Fentanyl Exposure

A U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania took to Twitter Tuesday to spread fear and panic that any exposure to the opioid fentanyl is potentially deadly, and police officers are in imminent danger whenever they interact with the drug in any way.

U.S. Attorney Scott Brady, representing the Western District of Pennsylvania, tweeted out a link to a release about a federal guilty plea by Anthony Lozito, 40, for charges related to fentanyl dealing in western Pennsylvania. Lozito was arrested in 2017 following a SWAT raid on his home. During the raid, a table with powdered narcotics on it was overturned and some of it was tossed into the air.

All 18 SWAT officers were then sent to a local hospital to determine whether they had been exposed to fentanyl, and they were all fine. Brady painted a very different picture of the incident, writing that “18 SWAT officers…were hospitalized from mere exposure to airborne fentanyl.”

Every time officers or agents enter a house with #fentanyl, they put their lives at risk. Here, 18 SWAT officers from @PghPolice were hospitalized from mere exposure to airborne fentanyl during a search warrant.

This is dangerous stuff, folks.#OpioidEpidemic https://t.co/XOI55Y2wvp

— US Attorney Scott Brady (@USAttyBrady) September 10, 2019

Brady’s reaction is both typical and mostly wrongheaded. Like nearly all prescription drugs that are made for injecting or swallowing, powdered fentanyl cannot be absorbed through unbroken skin. The same principle explains why you can’t cure a headache by rubbing a Tylenol pill on your forehead. The fentanyl patches given to cancer patients, meanwhile, are mixed with other drugs to help the pain reliever pass through the skin.

Yet lawmakers and law enforcement officials are obsessed with the idea that first responders are at risk of an overdose simply by touching or even being in the same room with powdered fentanyl. While it is indeed possible for fentanyl to enter the bloodstream through mucous membranes in the nose and mouth, not one of the 18 officers mentioned in Brady’s tweet seems to have actually inhaled the drug. Here’s the description by Brady’s office:

“Fentanyl exposure is an all too real risk to law enforcement as we learned this morning,” said [then-]Acting U.S. Attorney [Soo C.] Song. “During the search of the Bond Street residence pursuant to the search warrant, a table where the drugs were being bagged was overturned causing the suspected fentanyl to become airborne. Several SWAT operators experienced dizziness and numbness. In all, 18 officers were transported to UPMC-Mercy for evaluation before being medically cleared. Quick and professional action by first responders helped avert a potential catastrophe.”

As in other reports of first responders who were supposedly dosed with fentanyl, supposedly felt ill, but did not require the overdose reversal drug naloxone, a panic attack provides a better explanation. It’s also more understandable one: Cops are being told by their superiors and by clueless reporters that simply being in the same room as powdered fentanyl can kill them. That the people whose doors they’re banging down are touching the stuff and breathing the same air without dropping dead is likely lost on them in the heat of the raid. It’s certainly lost on Brady.

The reporting of the post-raid panic by KDKA, Pittsburgh’s CBS affiliate, reinforced the freakout. Even the chief of emergency services at the hospital emphasized the potential dangers:

“Fortunately, the individuals that were involved this morning were able to get out of the situation right away,” said Dr. [Michael] Turteurro. “The big thing that we did for them is we basically decreased the chance that they could be exposed to anything that was laying on their bodies or on their clothes. So the big thing is to get the clothes off them, get them showered, get them decontaminated and then have them evaluated by a medical professional.”

Reason‘s Mike Riggs interviewed Stanford anesthesiologist Steven Shafer back in 2017 to provide an antidote to this panic and explain how these opioids actually work. If law enforcement officials are concerned about accidentally inhaling powdered opioids, perhaps they should consider how they’re conducting the drug war and whether SWAT raids with more than a dozen people are actually needed for these busts.

Just last year, Brady wrote an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette encouraging the use of aggressive law enforcement tactics to fight the opioid overdose crisis. It’s important for him that the public remains in a state of fear over fentanyl so that he can continue to perpetuate a new front on the drug war. Don’t expect those responses to his tweet to have any impact on his thinking.

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Pittsburgh’s U.S. Attorney Is Lying to Cops and Constituents About the Actual Risks of Fentanyl Exposure

Every time officers or agents enter a house with #fentanyl, they put their lives at risk. Here, 18 SWAT officers from @PghPolice were hospitalized from mere exposure to airborne fentanyl during a search warrant.

This is dangerous stuff, folks.#OpioidEpidemic https://t.co/XOI55Y2wvp

— US Attorney Scott Brady (@USAttyBrady) September 10, 2019

“Fentanyl exposure is an all too real risk to law enforcement as we learned this morning,” said [then-]Acting U.S. Attorney [Soo C.] Song. “During the search of the Bond Street residence pursuant to the search warrant, a table where the drugs were being bagged was overturned causing the suspected fentanyl to become airborne. Several SWAT operators experienced dizziness and numbness. In all, 18 officers were transported to UPMC-Mercy for evaluation before being medically cleared. Quick and professional action by first responders helped avert a potential catastrophe.”

The reporting of the post-raid panic by KDKA, Pittsburgh’s CBS affiliate, reinforced the freakout. Even the chief of emergency services at the hospital emphasized the potential dangers:

“Fortunately, the individuals that were involved this morning were able to get out of the situation right away,” said Dr. [Michael] Turteurro. “The big thing that we did for them is we basically decreased the chance that they could be exposed to anything that was laying on their bodies or on their clothes. So the big thing is to get the clothes off them, get them showered, get them decontaminated and then have them evaluated by a medical professional.”

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Lobbyists Trying To Revive Ex-Im Bank’s Zombie Corpse for 10 More Years

With a key congressional deadline looming at the end of the month, the zombified remains of the Export-Import Bank could soon be resurrected—but new research shows why it should be permanently shuttered instead.

The Ex-Im Bank is a federal agency that subsidizes American manufacturers that sell products overseas. The bank provides artificially-low interest rates on loans to foreign countries and companies that purchase American-made goods—like Boeing jets, for example—in order to boost U.S. exports. In practice, the bank is a tool for crony capitalism that benefits politically well-connected businesses like Boeing, which received as much as 70 percent of all Ex-Im Bank loan guarantees in some years.

Congress allowed the Ex-Im Bank’s charter to expire in July 2015, and then reauthorized the bank a few months later with significant limitations on its authority. Until earlier this year, the bank was operating without a fully-staffed board and was prohibited from making loan guarantees of more than $10 million.

But the Ex-Im Bank could soon be back to full strength. In May, Congress filled the vacant spots on the bank’s board. If lawmakers vote to reauthorize the bank’s charter before September 30, the agency will be fully reanimated.

Playing the role of the Night King in this process is a group of lobbyists led by the National Association of Manufacturers, which on Wednesday called on Congress to reauthorize the bank. “In an increasingly competitive and uncertain global marketplace, America cannot afford to lose any opportunity to level the playing field and advance our country’s leadership,” the group, which includes more than 200 companies and trade associations, wrote in a letter to Congress.

Before they do anything, though, members of Congress should consider whether the Export-Import Bank’s cronyism is really as essential as its beneficiaries say. As Mercatus Center fellow and Reason columnist Veronique de Rugy has previously pointed out, companies that benefited from the Ex-Im Bank’s largesse—including Boeing, but also General Electric and Caterpillar—have been doing just fine while the bank was out of commission.

During the time that the Ex-Im Bank was operating below capacity, American taxpayers saved $47.9 billion, according to new research released this week by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank.

“Shuttering the bank could save Americans billions more,” says Ryan Young, a senior fellow at CEI and the author of the group’s new paper.

Unfortunately, it looks like there is broad bipartisan support for resuscitating the crony capitalist institution that’s survived since its creation in the midst of the Great Depression. Sens. Kevin Cramer (R–N.D.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D–Ariz.) have introduced a bill to keep the Ex-Im Bank open through September 2029. In the House, Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D–Calif.) and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R–N.C.), the committee’s ranking Republican, also support reauthorization.

What little hope there is of stopping the Ex-Im Bank probably lies with Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.), who has sponsored a bill to abolish the bank.

Even if there aren’t enough votes to kill the Ex-Im Bank for good, Young says, lawmakers “should insist on specific reforms that would restrain the bank’s power, including shortening the reauthorization period to three years to allow for more regular review of the Bank’s performance.”

If that doesn’t happen, the Ex-Im Bank will take its place alongside the 2013 budget caps and the so-called “sequestration” as significant policy accomplishments of the GOP’s “tea party” era that did not survive the first term of the Trump presidency.

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