but. after a long negotiation process fraught with turmoil the u.k. officially leaves the european union after 47 years of membership. the u.s. senate says no to the democratic attempt to allow new witnesses and evidence and donald trump's impeachment trial that paves the way to a final vote on whether to convict and remove the president expected next week. and as fears over the corona virus outbreak grow people around the globe reported a spike in discrimination against chinese people. you can always check out our team dot com for more on the latest headlines right now though the big picture is all new and it's coming up. on this week's show.

translation the oceans are actually suffocating why is this happening what does it mean to what's here on terra firma and what if anything can we do about it and what about what comes out of your faucet but 1st the team faith thing epidemic prompted a product ban but the east cigarette industry is planning a comeback i'm holland cook in washington this is the big picture on r t america. as a 15 year old in texas became the 60th known death related to east cigarettes and a ping there is good news and bad news about the teen fate being epidemic we've been covering all along. the good news is that the emergency room visits related

the cigarette use have declined after peaking this past september when related injuries were making headlines the bad news is that the products the administration banned could be back on the market soon in january the food and drug administration banned the manufacture distribution and sale of cartridge based fruit or mint flavor of the cigarettes which are popular among young people but all menthol and tobacco flavored vapors remain on sale while the f.d.a. determines if any flavor of cigarette is justifiable and manufacturers have until may to submit products for the u.s. food and drug administration approval the new york times reports that president trump interrupted a recent meeting with campaign advisers to scold the secretary of health and human services over the administration's ban on most flavored cigarettes according to people familiar with what was said in the oval office the times quotes president

trump as saying expletive deleted i never should have done this vaporing thing over which mr trump waffled for months but ultimately endorsed saying we're going to protect our families we're going to protect our children and we're going to protect the industry and after meeting with representatives of the east cigarette industry concerned about their industry and after the president's campaign manager warned him that the band could hurt him come election time with popular in key states he added that some band products could be back on the market in his words very quickly if you're a parent should you be screaming bloody murder dear u.s. senators and representatives let's ask the co-author of the tobacco dependence treatment handbook a guide to best practices new york university professor raymond i are a psychologist and expert on tobacco dependence and treats. welcome great to be

here you're surrounded by college kids and if they're going to n.y.u. they must be smart kids but as a behavioral scientist you're keenly aware of susceptibility to trends and the power of peer pressure how do we tell young people don't even try it can wait i don't think we can we would be successful with that with that message alone i think it's a good idea to you know to to warn people of the risks and to educate them and so the they can make an educated decision and choice but i think the real issue is you know how do we keep these products out of the hands of you know kids essentially youth sure college age kids there they're kind of in that gray zone right they're not full fledged adults or you have some way to argue that they are so it's a lot harder to convey a you know. stern messages to them that with the belief that they'll work well does

this government ban resonate with young people or perversely there's a glamorized babying is this the boy that my dad doesn't want me to go out with yeah i kind of think that there's been an overreaction and that the unfortunate consequence of that is you know it's a forbidden fruit issue there are you know if you're drawing all this attention to a product you know kids are going to say well what's all the fuss about. you know they might seek the opportunity to try it out other than 3rd grade behind the garage when we got caught i myself have never smoked cigarettes so i've not felt the agony seen of others trying to quit it sure looks like torture are east cigarettes and the easier to walk away from what you started i think so and that is the reason that i say that is that they're there they're not like cigarettes and i think they're actually miss. his name they shouldn't really be called cigarettes

they're a different kind of nicotine delivery product from what we know from decades of research the most addictive product tobacco product is a combustible cigarette i mean hand hands down that wins the prize for most addictive and our research and other people's research suggests that you know there is some risk of addiction with cigarettes but it's nowhere near what it would be for regular cigarettes will be for all these emergency room stories. deaths and the band i would hear on talk radio carefully worded commercials for jewel products imply that fate being will help you kick cigarettes true or false i think that's true we're waiting for more of the evidence to come in. you know it's not a complete slam dunk but you know the evidence is starting to trickle in and we're seeing more and more positive results and i just want to comment on what i think is

a big point of confusion. that that's out there now with with regard to the risk of e. cigarettes some you were talking earlier about palmeri illnesses deaths emergency room visits and everything in it as of recently as last week it's become more and more clear that those events are pretty much attributable to adulterated t.h.c. product so it's not the nicotine containing products that have been implicated but that message has gotten blurred and i think that's a that's you know it's hugely important because if you paint you know all products with the same brush people are going to get confused and the worst thing that i've seen happen is. cigarette smokers who successfully switched to cigarettes meaning they quit smoking are now saying all i don't know but these are the cigarettes because. maybe they're going to cause palminteri problems that right and they go

back to smoking cigarettes big mistake and you mention the t.h.c. think warnings we have read from the centers for disease control and world health organization tell us that young people who rape are more likely to smoke conventional cigarettes you've seen this and we've also read scary statistics about injury from being products that contain t.h.c. the psychoactive component to cannabis so analogy as nicotine based vapor are linked to teen cigarette smoking is a veil of bill a view of legal weed in many states now a gateway to t.h.c. based products it's hard to say i mean it's it's kind of like the wild west out there is a new phenomenon with legalization absolutely and the the real fundamental problem with the t.h.c. products that in my opinion is there's no standardization there's no regulation and

this is the problem that's why we're seeing you know these teach c products that work with vitamins acetate which is the culprit. and you know who's who's in charge . and but the the flipside with nic the nicotine products and you mentioned this earlier as well they actually have to get approved by the f.d.a. right so what that means is that the the f.d.a. is job to make sure that these products are safe are reasonably safe and that's what's happening now and that's what all the companies are going to have to do at least the ones that want to stay in business as demonstrate to the f.d.a. listen our products are not contaminated they are safe to use but they should be used by cigarette smokers just hearing the word acetate gives me the creeps. it's pretty scary stuff one of the recurring red flags in my layman's reading of all these health warnings we touched on a moment ago vaporing is still so new that we're short on. long term

data and now with recreational marijuana being legalized or medicinal in now in more states than not that's still a new phenomenon is all of this a time bomb. well it could be but that's where you know people the government regulatory agencies need to get their act together and say we need to have some standards we need to have some regulation to play regulatory process sees review processes that cetera it's happened for tobacco products thankfully took forever. but we even with tobacco products we're still in the early phases there's nothing like that out there for you know cannabis sort of t.h.c. products right new york university professor rim and i are a thank you for stepping into the big picture my pleasure and if you are the parent of a team here's the elevator speech version of the world health organization warning east cigarettes are particularly risky for adolescents young people who vapor are

more likely to smoke cigarettes and they're at increased risk for heart disease and lung disorders and anyone of any age should know that pregnant women are vaporing for 2 and that the cigarettes can expose bystanders and that vaporing devices have also caused injury by catching fire or exploding so before that may deadline for east cigarette manufacturers to ask the f.d.a. to re approve their products and while members of congress want us to know that they can get something done during the trump impeachment now is a good time to suggest what else they can work on. as you are suffering through the perennial chore do april 15 trying not to throw things at your t.v. when you hear actual examples of government waste as you note the difference between gross income and take home pay you will wince when you hear that we spent almost. $6000000.00 for columbia university and the national science foundation to

create climate change voice mails from the future describing the ravages projected from now until 2065 congressman mo brooks an alabama republican found 2 and a half 1000000 to produce the children's cartoon space racers and across the aisle and across the state democratic rep terri sewell directed 818-3007 150 dollars to produce a virtual reality to teach children in china how to cross the street and while every state confronts the homelessness crisis south dakotans mark historic hobo day with a $12000.00 grant secured by congresswoman christie now. these are just 4 of 100 examples of federal taxpayer abuse compiled by the nonpartisan watchdog group open the books dot com and with us

a deficits and national debt now measured in trillions that's 12 zeros some of this stuff seems extravagant conspiracy theorists might wonder why uncle sam is arming nonmilitary agencies 1300 guns purchased by the department of health and human services included a shotgun 5 machine guns and a 189 automatic firearms with 4000000 rounds of ammo 3400000 but the environmental protection agency guns ammo and military equipment and the v.a. spent 17 and a half 1000000 on 11000000 rounds of ammunition and military style equipment. if you work in corporate management you can relate to use it or lose it money left on spend at the end of

a budget year sends the wrong message about the coming years fundings and then the final month of 28000 fiscal year all federal agencies blew through a $97.00 b. $1000000000.00 but the biggest number we spotted was due to human error and or shenanigans trillion and a half dollars in mistaken and improper payments distributed by 20 agencies in fiscal year 2004 to 2019 if you would like to join over 100000 other americans who object to there's a petition at open the books dot com slash petition should you be inclined to gripe to your u.s. senators or representative remember how that game is played they swap votes on each other's pet projects what you consider pork is bringing home the bacon in another district or state. coming up you've seen sad pictures of fish floating belly up

why can't they breathe and how will we suffer from the ocean oxygenation this is the big picture on our t. america. we don't want the instead and. with an axis and the monument we want the kind of buzz of and bustle of streets filled with events this week see it with this distaste this has come from some to us maybe i love going to conferences and debates and such events but the battle of ideas and the one above it can for instance these are the kind of things this is striving. gives as that miss impala making connection with the woods was set up projects.

and another one of the highest in the way to go for the food. bank itself no to see it on the plaza this we've got to talk so hard not to think of the mother disappeared this woman then walked up to what they thought was an optimist i want them to think. this is the only thing that we do is music because everybody fights his way to. the floor you can use all the food out of his will to persuade you that you have given a shot at the moment on the. what i think is this is the that is a compliment.

in a new report researchers say the ocean is suffocating what's happening it's called ocean di oxygenation and the international union for the conservation of nature warns that as a warming ocean loses oxygen the delicate balance of marine life is thrown into disarray. why specifically is this happening and what does it mean to us here on terra firma and what if anything can we do about it let's ask the author of a stack of books including 50 ways to save the ocean he's someone you've read in the new york times national geographic popular science and elsewhere david hell varg is the founder of blue from tear an award winning nonprofit organization

providing resources about the health of the earth's oceans to advocates and decision makers david welcome thank you holland we read about dead zones in the water and it's very sad to see video of fish floating belly up on the surface what causes these dead zones and at the risk of a simple question why can't the fish swim away and escape well it's a combination of factors the dead zones are expanding and as you said the oceans becoming deoxygenated essentially what happens is you know a warmer more acidic ocean holds less dissolved oxygen which is ok if you're a jelly or microbial mat but not so good for bony fish and marine mammals and all of us who depend on them so part of it is a climate function but a lot of what you're seeing in coastal areas like florida is nutrient runoff they gag basically dumping into coastal waters and there were $140.00 global

dead zones 20 years ago the u.n. now says there were $500.00 of them. so you have like in florida for example you have the red tides along the gulf side in the blue green algae is on the on the other side and they're fairly extensive i mean like the giant seasonal dead zone in the gulf of mexico in that case most of the fin fish swim away but the sea dribbles in others and the shellfish die on the bottom senshi what happens is. you know this this nutrient rich runoff from industrial agriculture or even lawn fertilizers gets in the water creates this new crop of algae which then sink in the water column get eaten by bacteria that suck all the oxygen out of the water in the case of florida it actually promotes these really toxic algae at the red tides that when the aerosol late when there is wave action i've had friends down there vaccine gotten sick by going to the beach so it's

a growing problem i mean the oceans facing these cascading disasters of industrial overfishing of oil chemical nutrient and plastic pollution loss of habitat but what's really beating the hell of it right now is climate climate change is. basically a change in the physical nature of the ocean its circulation its temperature its chemistry and its color and we're in a crisis situation. you know seeing these disasters locally and globally here in california half the kalpa 95 percent of the of the kelp forest north of the bay area is gone in the last 3 years cask cascading effects almost all of them climate linked. and yet are more frustrated than despairing because mostly we know what the solutions are it's getting the political will to enact them that's that's

why we try and do what we can you know the. and it's scary at this point to talk about saving what we can but. you know that's that's what we have to do we don't know if we win to lose all we know that if we don't try we're going to lose and and our blue marble planets just too you know. stunning and exciting and sacred to put it risks the way we're now putting it at risk well it's a big ocean so back to my dumb question the fish that die is what's happening to them gradual enough that they can't just swim away you can't escape it. a lot of the fish kill offs is you have really rapid pollution where these. and oxic moments caused by the pollution scatch a lot of shoaling fish near the shore and they simply. suffocate before they think to move away right fish kind of stick to the waters they're used to and when those waters turn bad quickly they die. even smarter animals you know manatees and

dolphins have died because they haven't been at able to get out of the way. it's not just the oxidation it's a other form of pollution it's like and the source of a lot of this pollution of course whether it's petro chemical fertilizers or oil spills it's it you know our dependence on fossil fuels which you know coal and oil were great energy systems in the 16th the 19th century but in the 21st century it's time to move on to you know healthy jobs generating renewables i was out with b.p. back in 2007 their deep water rigs in the gulf of mexico i remember asking the rig boss the company man on one of the one of the platforms the name was actually bubba i said but what happens if you get a blowout of mahler 2 down he goes well well dave i guess we'll find out when it happens so 10 years later i was flying over a pot of 100 dolphins in

a humpback whale dying in the oil right off the source saying it's just frustrating because. you know we're in the 6th extinction polson planetary history the last one was 63000000 years ago when a meteor took out the dinosaurs well now we're the media but you know we also have to be the you know the planet savior i mean it's sort of up to us if we keep doing what we're doing. and destroy the ocean which is a crucible a life on our planet or if we learned you know. the mistakes of our past are limiting our options today but we gotta move on on these issues and hopefully with a lot of youth leadership now emerging we might is this just in the ocean phenomenon or are for instance the great lakes similarly at risk. now i mean what you see it's a water phenomena. the issues that we're seeing in the ocean are repeated in the

great lakes and other freshwater bodies toledo ohio had to shut down its drinking water systems when when toxic algae blooms occurred and they're increasingly occurring in the great lakes the same reasons fertilizer runoff. oil pollution plastic pollution and nutrient runoff these are all phenomena that we're seeing and all our water is all our public water is be they fresh. or salty or brackish they the. hell vard from blue front here because i live in the ocean state this subject really hits a nerve i live out on block island rhode island it's only 12 square miles and half of the island is set aside from development of any kind and i have seen video of you talking about dollars spent on water treatment plants versus dollars spent for land preservation talk about that. right i mean essentially very little is is

committed to our public season even though it's you know we we actually in the u.s. for example we have more more claims on salt water territory than we have actual land mass. and in and you're very lucky block island is beautiful it's also the site of our 1st offshore wind turbine farms which year senator sheldon whitehouse he likes to brag that the ocean state has gone to offshore wind which is great but it's like 36 you know. megawatts of power versus the european union that has over 18000 and we need to start investing in onshore coastal protection offshore clean energy and protecting our fishery resources in fact my group of friends here is work with the center for the blue economy at middlebury institute to create a ocean climate action plan that we hope will be. you know actions that they will

be taken at the local and federal level and senator elizabeth warren just introduced a blue new deal or announced one which is largely the issues we need to address which is is you know runoff pollution is protecting natural resources creating kind of national parks in the sea again we've only got about. you know 2 percent of the ocean fully protected the way that we have right more than 10 percent of our land base and protected parklands and these are not just parks for beauty these are like the biological reserves or i'll need sure you want to know what rural confines i lived in i get my water from a well in the backyard and i challenge to a climate change daughter with a blind taste test we had tap water 1st was that fiji water brand of bottled water and my friend could not tell which was which so talk about the consequence of the

fiji water product. oh it's nonsense i mean tap water is like a human right tap for access to fresh water and and a lot of the tap water is excellent i mean i'm in the bay are we get it from the. pet chat had said she which is granted. fed former valley new york gets it from the catskills we should be fighting for more public water fountains to make sure that our water sources in our taps are healthy and stop you know having corporate water bottled and plastic which is a petrochemical pollutant that's that's destroying you know a lot of marine wife life and then on top of that like with things like fiji water shipping or shipping bottles of water around the world heavy around the world burning fossil fuels ships burning bunker fuel which is like the dregs of the petroleum process to bring us plastic bottles of water that we drink once and throw

away it's water. david held our blue frontier dot org thank you for your perspective on this vital issue and thank you for the work you do and for getting the word out thank you and thank you for watching the big picture if you see us somewhere else you can now also watch r t america live at youtube dot com slash our america got direct t.v. channel 321 in cord cutter heaven pluto t.v. we are channel 279 and the dish dish were 280 and all of our shows are available anytime anywhere on any device at youtube dot com slash the big picture r t m holland cook in washington at holland cook on twitter where if you follow me i'll follow you questions you're more.

but 2020 presidential campaign is beginning to look a lot like the 2016 race but this time around the insurgent is bernie sanders who's not even a member of the democratic party voters again are not interested in establishment politicians in fact they appear to be rebelling against the move we see from sanders showdown. all sorts of bizarre forms buildings made of.