Cardiologist Says FDA Is 'Late to the Show' on Teen Vaping Crisis
*By Carlo Versano*
The shocking rise in teen vaping is a public health crisis that the FDA has been slow to address, according to a nationally recognized cardiologist.
Dr. Kevin Campbell, who is also CEO of Pace Mate, a digital cardiac monitoring service, said the [recent study](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/e-cigarettes-single-handedly-drives-spike-in-teen-tobacco-use-cdc.html) from the CDC that linked vaping to a spike in teen tobacco use shows that more serious steps need to be take. The first step? Get rid of the flavored nicotine "pods," which Campbell said are acting as a gateway for teenage beginner vapers to get hooked on nicotine.
"We don't know the long-term health effects yet," Campbell said. "I can't emphasize that enough."
While popular vape products are unarguably "healthier" than combustible cigarettes, they still involve the delivery of an addictive drug (nicotine), that is known to do damage to the heart and blood vessels. And there is not enough data on the additives and preservatives that go into the pods.
"They may be doing deleterious things to our bodies as well," Campbell said.
One in five American high schoolers now vapes, according to the CDC, which is enough to cause alarm at the FDA. That agency recently announced a crackdown on vaping companies that market to teens, but that's not enough, in Campbell's opinion.
"I think the FDA is a little bit late to the show here," he said. It's going to require a national education program ー think D.A.R.E. for a new era ー that explains the unknowns and risks involved in vaping. "We need to get ahead of it," Campbell said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/teen-tobacco-product-use-on-the-rise).
Amid a spate of Big Tech earnings reports on the horizon, social media giant Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion offer to buy the platform. Musk has already signaled his intention to take the company private, and Angelo Zino, a senior equity analyst for CFRA, joined Cheddar News to talk about tech-related business news and what taking Twitter private could mean for the company. "His kind of vision is clearly on softening his stance on content moderation. You're going to see him do it, and we'll kind of see what else he has in store in terms of the pipeline of enhancing the product out there," Zino said about Musk's plans. "But there's a lot more he can do as a private company than he can do as a public company."
As Bitcoin's price continues to dance around the $40,000 mark (in real-time), Jimmy Nguyen, President and Co-Founder of the Bitcoin Association for BSV, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses the recent volatility that has dragged Bitcoin's price down from its all-time high of roughly $69,000 in November.
Data from a Slack Future Forum survey shows employees returning full-time to the office are not thrilled with their experience. Sheela Subramanian, vice [resident of the Future Forum, joined Cheddar News to talk about how worker satisfaction is worsening in returning to the office compared to those workers with flexible schedules. "Employers need to actually empower their teams to create team level agreements and also skill their managers to better lead distributed teams because everybody's work is different," Subramanian noted.
Geetu Sharma, Founder and Investment Manager at AlphasFuture, reacts to a wild day on Wall Street and outlines her expectations ahead of a very busy week of earnings.
UPSIDE foods, a company that makes cultivated meat products, recently raised $400 million in a Series C round.
UPSIDE says it's developing a way to grow real meat, poultry, and seafood, without the need to raise animals for human consumption. It's a process that gets the attention of some big-name backers, including Bill Gates and Richard Branson. Dr. Uma Valeti, Founder and CEO of UPSIDE Foods, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
