A disposable cannabis vape cartridge.Ben Gilbert/Business Insider
In a test of cannabis vape cartridges conducted by NBC News, 15 out of 15 illegal carts contained a fungicide that, when burned, can turn into hydrogen cyanide — a extremely dangerous poison.
All the legal vape carts tested were deemed safe.
In addition to the fungicide, 13 out of 15 contained Vitamin E — a solvent that's used to cut cannabis vapes.
Vaping, once thought to be a safe alternative to smoking, is facing increasing scrutiny over an increasingly visible health crisis: 530 total possible cases of vape-related lung illness, according to the CDC.
And it's not just cigarette smoking that has people turning to vaping — cannabis, too, is available in vape form. But, like so many black market items before it, the world of illegal weed vapes is tainted with the potential for dangerous additives that could hurt users.
A recent NBC News study documented exactly how real that potential danger is: Of the 15 black market cannabis vape carts NBC had tested, 13 came back positive for containing Vitamin E acetate — a solvent used to cut cannabis that, when it gets in your lungs, could trigger an immune response that causes pneumonia.
Even worse: Of the illegal carts NBC tested, all 15 tested positive for myclobutanil — a fungicide that, when burned, can turn into hydrogen cyanide.
It's not all bad news — NBC News also tested three cannabis vape cartridges from a legal dispensary in California, all from different manufacturers.
All three came back clean, with the testing facility having found "no heavy metals, pesticides, or residual solvents like Vitamin E."
But with no federal-level regulation for cannabis vape carts, and legality of cannabis so balkanized, it's difficult to regulate dangerous additives in vape carts. As the federal government struggles to regulate the quickly emerging market, it's offering a straightforward solution that should work for anyone: Reconsidering buying and using a black market vape cart.
"If you're thinking of purchasing one of these products off the street, out of the back of a car, out of a trunk, in an alley," Mitch Zeller, the director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, said recently, "or if you're going to go home and make modifications to the product yourself using something that you purchased from some third party or got from a friend, think twice."
Nine former Tesla employees, who worked at the company between 2008 and this year, described to Business Insider their least favorite parts of their jobs.Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Like many companies engaged in a highly competitive business, Tesla is not always an easy place to work. From long hours to the stress of working under CEO Elon Musk, a job at the electric-car maker can be demanding.
Nine former employees who worked at the company between 2008 and 2019 described their least favorite parts of their jobs. Each asked for anonymity due to a fear of reprisal from Tesla.
Here's what they said.
The photos in this story do not depict the former Tesla employees Business Insider interviewed.
Are you a current or former Tesla employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at mmatousek@businessinsider.com.
Electric carmaker Tesla interfered with legitimate union organizing and must read a notice to workers explaining their rights in a meeting requiring attendance from Chief Executive Elon Musk, a US labor judge ruled on Friday.
The company committed a series of violations of the National Labor Relations Act in 2017 and 2018, Amita Baman Tracy, a California administrative law judge ruled in a court filing.
Among the violations of the law cited in the filing was a tweet sent by Musk in May 2018.
(Reuters) - Electric carmaker Tesla interfered with legitimate union organizing and must read a notice to workers explaining their rights in a meeting requiring attendance from Chief Executive Elon Musk, a U.S. labor judge ruled on Friday.
The company committed a series of violations of the National Labor Relations Act in 2017 and 2018, Amita Baman Tracy, a California administrative law judge ruled in a court filing.
Among the violations of the law cited in the filing was a tweet sent by Musk in May 2018.
"Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare," Musk wrote in the tweet from last year.
The tweet amounted to "threatening employees" with loss of stock options if they vote in favor of the union, the judge said in her ruling on Friday.
The ruling has called on the electric carmaker to hold a meeting at its California assembly plant where either Musk or his agent must inform the workers that the National Labor Relations Board has concluded that Tesla broke the law.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Friday's ruling.
In the past, the company has been plagued by safety complaints brought by workers, allegations that Tesla denies. Workers have said that long hours and pressure to deliver vehicles quickly takes a toll, and some have pushed for a union.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe
Why Peloton's IPO was a huge success
Peloton went public on Thursday.
Shares of the interactive exercise platform operator priced at $29 on Wednesday and finished Thursday’s trading session at $25.76, good for an 11.2% decline on its first day of trading.
This decline in the stock on its first day of trading could be framed as a disappointment. Bloomberg notes, for instance, that was the third-worst public debut of the last decade.
This price action might indicate that investors aren't excited about Peloton's prospects and that the struggles of consumer tech IPOs this year will continue. Some may also ask if this means the IPO window is closing. Have the struggles at The We Company spread into other offerings? And if the whole market of a successful IPO is seeing shares pop on the first day, then surely this is a failure, right?
Well, as far as famed VC investor Bill Gurley sees it, the first-day IPO pop is the most misunderstood and financially nonsensical event that a management — and investors and the media — team could root for.
"Thinking that a pop is a marketing event is about the most short-term oriented decision a manager or CEO/CFO could think," Gurley said. "Because it happens and it's over. And then the rest of your corporate life is based on how the company performs. And the notion that I'd get some lasting benefit by paying $500 million for this marketing event flies in the face of long term thinking."
Gurley cites an analogy about homebuying he heard from Henry Blodget — imagine selling your house and then hearing your broker sold the home for 80% more the next day. Now imagine celebrating that. This is what is happening when first-day IPO pops are cheered. It is a celebration that makes no economic sense.
Companies that see shares pop on the first day of trading leave money on the table. Money that could've been used to invest in the business. And the founders, employees, and early investors in a company that sell shares into the IPO also lose money — potentially hundreds of millions of dollars — if the stock goes nuts on the first day of trading. The only stakeholders excited about a first-day IPO pop are the investors who were fortunate enough to get an allocation the day before the IPO and then flipped these shares and the bankers who will now be able to earn fees on a future secondary offering of stock.
To take a real world example from this year, anyone that sold Beyond Meat (BYND) shares into the IPO sold shares at $25; when the market closed on Beyond's first day of trading, those shares were worth $65.75. So a Beyond Meat executive, for example, that sold $1 million worth of Beyond Meat stock into the IPO lost out on more than $1.6 million in potential gains.
Peloton IPO (Reuters)
But guess who did benefit? The investors who got an IPO allocation of Beyond and flipped it on day one and the bankers that got to participate in Beyond's secondary offering in late July.
In other words, the winner of Beyond Meat's IPO wasn't Beyond Meat.
Now, certainly the bankers that run IPO processes don't do nothing. You cannot have well-paid, well-connected finance professionals market your company and connect with investors for free. And as with many things in financial markets, the psychology of events can matter as much as the economics of an event. So if the psychology of an IPO that sinks on its first day of trading is thought to indicate that the company's prospects are bad, then the economic benefit for a company that prices its IPO higher than where it opens for trade might be ignored by investors.
Gurley's solution for companies is to favor direct listings. In a direct listing — which we've seen from Spotify (SPOT) and Slack (WORK) recently — companies don't lean on a team of bankers to drum up support for shares at a certain price.
Instead, the company says it will list shares on a certain exchange on a certain date and then shares begin trading. The newly-public company does not raise any money or issue any new shares. Of course, the problem with direct listings is that they make bankers a whole lot less money.
But the goal of an IPO isn't to enrich bankers or to make shares trade higher. The goal of an IPO is to raise money and offer liquidity to early shareholders who had been sitting on illiquid positions. The price the market sets for shares after they start trading does not — or at least, should not, and certainly need not — matter to the company.
Because in the end, a good company will be respected by the market over the long term. As Gurley reminds listeners, Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), and Alphabet (GOOGL) "broke issue" and traded below their IPO price. And I think we'd all agree these companies have done well by their shareholders.
8:30 a.m. ET: Personal Income, August (0.4% expected, 0.1% in July); Personal Spending, August (0.3% expected, 0.6% in July)
8:30 a.m. ET: Durable Goods Orders, August preliminary (-1.2% expected, 2.0% in July); Durables excluding Transportation, August preliminary (0.3% expected, -0.4% in July);
10 a.m. ET: University of Michigan Sentiment, September final (92.1 expected, 92.0 prior)
From Yahoo Finance
Season 4 of the popular NBC drama “This is Us” premiered on Tuesday. Today at 5 p.m. ET Yahoo Finance will reprise the My Three Cents installment in which The Final Round co-anchor Jen Rogers interviews “This is Us” star Chrissy Metz, who speaks candidly about growing up poor and about how she keeps a close eye on her finances to ensure she never lives in poverty again.
ZHOUSHAN, CHINA - SEPTEMBER 01: Aerial view of a Cosco France container ship berthing with the help of tugboats at the Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan on September 1, 2019 in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province of China. The Cosco France container ship, coming from Singapore, will unload 8,015 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers at the Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan. (Photo by Yao Feng/VCG via Getty Images)
WeWork's new co-CEOS, Artie Minson, left, and Sebastian Gunningham, are reportedly moving quickly to overhaul its management.We Company; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
WeWork's new co-CEOs appear eager to make a sharp break from Adam Neumann's reign.
Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham plan to oust some 20 friends and family members of Neumann as part of an effort to overhaul the company and its management, The Wall Street Journal's Eliot Brown, Anupreeta Das, and Maureen Farrell reported Thursday. Among those in their sights: Michael Gross, a longtime friend of Neumann who serves as WeWork's vice chair, and Chris Hill, the company's chief product officer, who is also a brother-in-law of Neumann's wife Rebekah.
Business Insider had previously reported that Hill was slated to leave, along with Roni Bahar, WeWork's director of development, and Zvika Shachar, its head of global security.
In addition to Gross and Hill, The Journal reported that around 10 employees who directly reported to Neumann in a group dubbed the "oval office" will also be leaving the company. It was unclear if Bahar and Shachar were part of the "oval office." Also, Rebekah Neumann is stepping down from her roles at the company, Bloomberg reported earlier this week.
WeWork representatives did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The new co-CEOs are cleaning up after WeWork's failed IPO
Minson and Gunningham are expected to go far beyond just pushing out Neumann's circle in trying to reshape the company. They're also expected to slash thousands of jobs and sell off businesses outside of WeWork's core office rental operation, The Journal reported. Additionally, they're planning to sell off the company's Gulfstream G650ER jet that the company purchased last year for $60 million, as Business Insider reported. Neumann used the jet often to fly between New York and the Bay Area, according to The Journal; he has homes in both places.
The changes come after Neumann's abrupt downfall in the wake of WeWork's failed initial public offering. The company was planning on going public as soon as this month, but postponed the IPO after meeting stiff resistance from potential investors who were concerned about its governance and spiraling losses. Initially, the company said it still planned to go public later this year. Now, the company is potentially looking to push back the offering into next year, according to The Journal's report.
WeWork has $6 billion riding on the timing and success of its IPO. A collection of lenders, including JPMorgan, have promised to give it a credit line of up to that amount if it raises $3 billion in a public offering by the end of this year, although they could change the terms of that agreement.
Got a tip about WeWork or another company? Contact this reporter via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.
WeWork's new co-CEOS, Artie Minson, left, and Sebastian Gunningham, are reportedly moving quickly to overhaul its management.We Company; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
WeWork's new co-CEOs appear eager to make a sharp break from Adam Neumann's reign.
Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham plan to oust some 20 friends and family members of Neumann as part of an effort to overhaul the company and its management, The Wall Street Journal's Eliot Brown, Anupreeta Das, and Maureen Farrell reported Thursday. Among those in their sights: Michael Gross, a longtime friend of Neumann who serves as WeWork's vice chair, and Chris Hill, the company's chief product officer, who is also a brother-in-law of Neumann's wife Rebekah.
Business Insider had previously reported that Hill was slated to leave, along with Roni Bahar, WeWork's director of development, and Zvika Shachar, its head of global security.
In addition to Gross and Hill, The Journal reported that around 10 employees who directly reported to Neumann in a group dubbed the "oval office" will also be leaving the company. It was unclear if Bahar and Shachar were part of the "oval office." Also, Rebekah Neumann is stepping down from her roles at the company, Bloomberg reported earlier this week.
WeWork representatives did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The new co-CEOs are cleaning up after WeWork's failed IPO
Minson and Gunningham are expected to go far beyond just pushing out Neumann's circle in trying to reshape the company. They're also expected to slash thousands of jobs and sell off businesses outside of WeWork's core office rental operation, The Journal reported. Additionally, they're planning to sell off the company's Gulfstream G650ER jet that the company purchased last year for $60 million, as Business Insider reported. Neumann used the jet often to fly between New York and the Bay Area, according to The Journal; he has homes in both places.
The changes come after Neumann's abrupt downfall in the wake of WeWork's failed initial public offering. The company was planning on going public as soon as this month, but postponed the IPO after meeting stiff resistance from potential investors who were concerned about its governance and spiraling losses. Initially, the company said it still planned to go public later this year. Now, the company is potentially looking to push back the offering into next year, according to The Journal's report.
WeWork has $6 billion riding on the timing and success of its IPO. A collection of lenders, including JPMorgan, have promised to give it a credit line of up to that amount if it raises $3 billion in a public offering by the end of this year, although they could change the terms of that agreement.
Got a tip about WeWork or another company? Contact this reporter via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.
A disposable cannabis vape cartridge.Ben Gilbert/Business Insider
Legal cannabis vape cartridges at a production facility.Facebook/selectstrains
