Hurricane Idalia’s Multibillion $$$ Impact & Narcan Goes Over-The-Counter

0:00Ready for AI? First things first, you should get your data foundation in order. That's where Quest software comes in. Quest helps customers create trusted, AI-ready data, manage Microsoft Active Directory with less risk, and protect identities from ransomware. While everyone else talks about AI possibilities, Quest software helps customers get their data ready for AI and build a foundation for future success. Learn more at quest.com slash brew. That's quest.com slash brew. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, a new hope for the cannabis industry as the government makes moves to reclassify the legal status of pot.

0:38And the empire strikes back. Nebraska's elite volleyball team just set a world record for attendance at a women's sporting event. Think of a number in your head, and it's almost certainly higher than that. Then we'll sort through the aftermath of another major hurricane that made landfall in Florida yesterday. Plus, Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant are teaming up to give us a smart speaker with multiple personalities to make setting those kitchen timers even easier. It's Thursday, August 31st. Let's ride.

1:13So there was this super blue moon last night, and I tried to get hyped for it, but reading an article by an astronomy expert completely ruined it for me. Joe Rao, an instructor at the Hayden Planetarium, said the concept of a supermoon, which is when the moon is full and near its closest point to Earth at the same time, is just a branding exercise coined by an astrologist, not an astronomist, to get people excited about the moon. The only reason this moon was named a blue moon is because it was the second full moon of August happening on the 30th. So there's nothing blue about it. Also, he said that despite the moon being closer to Earth, a regular person would not be able to tell the difference between a super moon and a regular full moon.

1:54So, Toby, if I didn't tell you there was a super moon last night and I just kind of blindfolded you, had you go look at it, you probably would not have been able to tell me that anything different was going on. So personally, not into super moons anymore. I've had an awakening and y 'all are a bunch of sheeple who take the mainstream media at your word. Oh, my good Lord. I'm on team super moon, obviously. First of all, you put super in front of anything, I'm into it. But also, I feel like it's more the moon illusion that people see than any super moon. Because the moon illusion is basically whenever it's near the horizon, it appears larger in the sky.

2:30I didn't know this, but the moon stays the same size no matter where it is in the sky. It's just when we have something to compare it to that it appears larger. So I saw the moon yesterday, and it looked very big. I don't know. Call me a sheeple if you want, but I'm on Team Supermoon. Just let the people have a nice full moon to take pictures. They can have fun. I just want people to know. I just want them to know. I'm just giving information. Thank you, Neil. All right, let's get into our top story of the day, where Hurricane Idalia made landfall in my home state of Florida yesterday. Now, this was a big one.

3:02Category 3, maximum sustained winds of close to 125 miles an hour, record storm surges, and more than 400 ,000 people out of electricity. It was the strongest storm to hit that west coast kind of armpit area of Florida, southeast of Tallahassee in 125 years. A storm like this was definitely to be expected this year. The waters of the northeastern Gulf of Mexico are about three degrees Fahrenheit above average. Also, the area of the Gulf it was traversing is a plume outflow of the Mississippi River, which means there is low salinity water at the surface, which typically also contributes to stronger storms.

3:39Plus, there is the curse of the I storms to contend with. Every storm beginning with the letter I since 2019 has made landfall in the U.S. and Adalia was no exception. Neil, this is already shaping up to be as costly as you'd expect for Florida and Georgia. And we could be looking at another multi-billion dollar disaster just one year after Hurricane Ian led to nearly$100 billion in damages. But the overall vibe I was getting from reading news reports this morning was that it wasn't as bad as feared, not even close to as bad as Ian, which hit further south on the coast near Fort Myers. This one, you said the armpit of Florida.

4:17Luckily, a lot of people don't live in that armpit area. You even told me yourself, you're like, I've never got a few hours from your house. So a lot of people, you know, a lot of people's homes and businesses got hurt by this. But overall, this seems like the best possible scenario for such a large storm because it kind of hit in an area that wasn't so populated. So I don't think this is going to come even close to as bad as Ian,$100 billion. This they're expecting closer to$9 or$10 billion. One of the big things that made people nervous before this hurricane made landfall, though, is that some fuel contamination happened, which is where just through some human error, someone mixed diesel with gasoline at 30 or so odd gas stations.

5:03And that made the evacuation a little tough because if you filled up at one of those gas stations, car engines do not like when you mix regular gas with diesel fuel. And so that was like a little nerve wracking was could this evacuation happen at the pace that it needed to. But it turns out that it didn't turn out to be a huge, huge deal. But that was a little nerve wracking. I wonder how often that happens. Well, it's just, yeah. And it's just really bad timing, though, too. Like, in a time where you need your car to evacuate, like, we get a human error where it's mixed. So, yeah, that was a bit of a bummer.

5:33But, yeah, this storm for sure. There was a lot of different angles to it, though. That was interesting. Obviously, the eye angle, I thought, was extremely interesting. Like, what is it? Let's just stop naming stores eye names because. They have been because when a storm is so bad, they retire it, right? So when it kills a lot of people or when it's especially destructive, they retire it. And storms beginning with the letter I have been retired more than any other letter since 1955. There have been 13 storms retired with I names compared to the second place is 10 with F and 9 with C. So the question is, why is I so bad?

6:11And some, you know, astronomers are like or some meteorologists are like, well, maybe it comes during peak hurricane season because it's the ninth letter of the alphabet. So, you know, it may follow this normal, normal curve where that, you know, this normal distribution where we get the most storms kind of peaking in the middle. But you don't have H or J anywhere in the top retired name. So it might just be chance that I is way more destructive. You had Ian last year. There's Irene and a bunch of others. So I think we should skip I. There's also the supermoon angle. No. Not to bring it up again, but whenever the moon is closest to Earth, it makes its gravitational pull is also the highest, which leads to even higher tides, which makes storm surges worse.

6:56So depending on where you fall on the supermoon scale, it did affect it in some way. Because just if the water level is higher and the tides are higher, then it's going to make the storm surge a little bit worse. So there is a supermoon angle to it. I totally buy that. The last thing I want to say on this is one person who's probably breathing a sigh of relief this morning is Warren Buffett. Because Warren Buffett made a big bet on reinsurance in Florida, hoping that there wouldn't be a huge destructive storm this season. And he faces$15 billion in losses if there is a super destructive storm.

7:28But so far, I think Idalia is not that one. So it's kind of interesting where a lot of the insurers are pulling out of Florida. and Warren Buffett's kind of saying, well, isn't that one of his sayings? It was his birthday yesterday, first of all. One of his sayings is, you know, like you only see who's wearing pants when the tide goes out. So he made a big bet on reinsurance, but there's still, this is just the middle part, as we know, of hurricane season, and they're expecting an above-average active season going into the fall. All right, moving on. Major developments in the pot world. U.S. health officials have written to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

8:05Hello, Hank, asking it to reclassify marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug under the Controlled Substances Act. Right now, marijuana is considered a Schedule 1 drug, which puts it in the same category as high-risk substances like heroin and LSD. Moving it to Schedule 3, which advocates have asked for a long time, would lump it in with ketamine and cough syrup, things that are considered less dangerous and obtainable with a prescription. It would also be an acknowledgment by the federal government that pot has legit uses. So if this happens, it would be revolutionary for the struggling cannabis industry.

8:38For one, reclassification would drastically lower the tax rate cannabis companies have to pay since they can't take tax deductions like most other companies. It would also possibly open the door to federally chartered banks to begin working with the industry. And we know that's been a major hurdle for cannabis businesses. So while there's a long review process ahead, cannabis companies can finally see the light that is Schedule 3 after being mired in dark Schedule 1 land for so long. Yeah, kind of the reaction from the cannabis industry was like, great. Yeah, it does give us a path towards those tax breaks, which are huge.

9:10It also makes research on the drug easier. One thing it still does not do, though, is give a comprehensive regulatory framework for the industry. So even though it is moving towards this less criminalized version of what it would be, it still is not the comprehensive regulatory framework that a lot of people in the industry have been calling for for a long time. That being said, though, marijuana stocks did react to the news yesterday. The MJ Pure Play 100 index, first of all, great name for an index. Yeah, it was it. It rose 13 percent yesterday. It's still down 21 percent year to date. But we did see this massive spike on this news that this could potentially be happening.

9:50And there was this new research that came out of the University of Michigan earlier this month that I was reading into. Cannabis cannabis use in the United States has never been higher. Everyone is freaking getting high here. So according to the research, almost 44 % of young adults between 19 and 30 and nearly 28 % of midlife adults, so 35 to 50, reported using marijuana in the last 12 months. That's an all-time high for both. And then when you look at daily marijuana, so people use it every day, more than 11 % of young adults do, and those are double the rates from 10 years ago. So this is a very popular thing.

10:27It's only becoming even more popular. I think 38 states have legalized it for recreational or medical use. 38 allow it for medical use and 23 allow it for recreational use. So, yeah, of course we're going to see it. It is crazy that it's been lumped in with heroin. Yeah. Because it's legal. But it also doesn't feel quite right to lump it in with cough syrup at the same time. But also ketamine snuck in there too, though. So it is interesting to see which drugs are class one and which are class three. Also, just one final note, the U.S. Open is going on right now, and a lot of players have been complaining about smells of marijuana smoke while playing on some of the outer courts.

11:04And I also thought it was hilarious. I was reading articles on this, and some of the fans were interviewed, and they were going, we just smell New York air. Or another one said, no, but my sense of smell isn't great these days. So I do think it was interesting that New Yorkers were like, I don't know, man. This is just kind of what it smells like. It's baseline smell, but this is court 17 right near Corona Park. So they actually investigated what was going on because a bunch of the players were like this is really like kind of messing with my game One as very I've said court 17 definitely smells like Snoop Dogg's living room So this is kind of it's seems like it's powerful and they think it's right up against the corona park So they think that people are kind of token up in the park right near the stadium and that's kind of walking in But they said that no fans in the stands were doing it though I'm sure they are because you have these little vape things that you can just hit them pretty easily not that I know Okay, Neil, more drug-related news for our next story.

11:58For the first time ever, people in the U.S. will soon be able to purchase an overdose reversal drug without a prescription. Starting next week, pharmacies across the nation will begin selling boxes of Narcan, a nasal spray that can help save people from overdoses. This hits on a bunch of themes right now in the U.S. The opioid crisis is as bad as ever with more than 100 ,000 opioid overdoses, deaths in each of the last two years in the U.S. The synthetic opioid fentanyl played a role in over two thirds of those deaths as well. But while Narcan moving over the counter is a step in the right direction, its$45 price tag puts it potentially out of reach for those who need it most.

12:39Neil, I feel like we're hearing this story more and more of drugs moving over the counter, but at prohibitive prices, although it does look like we're getting some insurance coverage from certain carriers in certain states. What do you make of it? And that's important because one in five people with opioid use disorder are uninsured. So this price is a big deal. And also where you put it in the store, because there is a stigma around it. And we've been talking for a long time about how retailers dealing with theft are moving medicines and other products behind these glass doors. that you need to ask people who work there to get it for you.

13:13And there's a concern that people who are going in to get Narcan will not ask and it'll decrease usage. But this seems like a total game changer. It really works. It works in a fraction of a time that an EMT would take to get to someone. And they think that moving over the counter will allow it to be placed in first aid kits in many public places like libraries, schools, what have you. So theaters, so this seems like a total game changer. It really works, and public health advocates are definitely super happy about this. Maybe not about the price, but they think it'll be sold a little more cheaply, sort of in bulk to these public health advocacy organizations.

13:51Yeah, it's just so easy to use, too. A lot of people compare it to using Flonase, where you just put a plunger in your nose and depress the plunger, and it does work very quickly. So also on the insurance side, most over-the-counter medications are usually not covered by insurance, but some insurers are saying, yes, we will look into covering Narcan. In places like Missouri, California, Massachusetts, they're all saying their Medicaid programs will look into covering Narcan. And then private health plans like Blue Cross, Blue Shield say that they'll fully cover non-prescription Narcan as well.

14:26So it is, we saw this too, going back to a different over-the-counter pill, birth control pill, which was called O-Pill. It was moving towards over-the-counter access. And we had the same conversation around, should insurers cover this, even though over-the-counter medications are usually not under these plans? But it does seem like insurers are waking up to the fact that this is drastically increasing access to these things. And like, we should help people cover it as well. All right, Neil, before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break.

15:22options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. In America, half of every dollar spent on brand medicines goes to entities who don't make them. While middlemen like PBMs and 340B hospitals drive up costs, Biopharma is investing$500 billion in new infrastructure and manufacturing here at home and helping patients buy medicines directly at lower prices. Tell Washington to end middleman markups and put American patients first. Visit phrma.org slash middleman. All right, welcome to Neil's Numbers, the Thursday segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will make you the most insufferable know-it-all at happy hour this evening.

16:09For my first number, we need to talk about women's volleyball in Nebraska because it is mega. So mega that last night, the Nebraska Cornhuskers volleyball team broke the record for attendance at a women's sporting event ever. More than 92 ,000 people packed Memorial Stadium, which is typically used for football, to watch their number four ranked team play Omaha. That topped the previous record for a women's sporting event of 91 ,648 set in the Champions League final in Europe last year. It's also more people than attend Nebraska football games at Memorial Stadium, and we know that's big. But the more you read into this and what volleyball means to Nebraska, the more your jaw will drop.

16:50The previous record for attendance at a collegiate volleyball match was less than 19 ,000. This was 92K. Nebraska volleyball has sold out 306 consecutive regular season games, and they've led the nation in attendance every season since 2013. It's also one of the few programs in women's D1 sports to turn a profit, making$1 million last year. I also just want to call out the fact that Omaha and Nebraska are these huge sports towns, actually. Because I've played soccer at the University of Omaha. I've played at Creighton University, which is also in Omaha. And it is a wild environment. I played a preseason game against Omaha.

17:26Sold out. I was getting heckled. It was crazy. So there is something about Omaha as an underrated sports town. What is, is University of Omaha? Yeah. Is it the University of Nebraska, Omaha? I think it's just Omaha. Yeah, but like good soccer program. So yeah, just shout out to Omaha and Nebraska in general. Lincoln. Also, again, it was Warren Buffett's birthday yesterday. I don't know if that has anything to do with it. This isn't Lincoln. I know. Okay, I'm just saying. All right, Nebraska. I'm giving Omaha, it's whatever. It's new. And then Scott McCreary also, I want to give a shout out to, because he performed, I don't know why, but that name has stuck with me from American Idol lore.

18:01He like won like 10 season or something. He performed after this event. So just a big day in Lincoln, Nebraska. And obviously, yeah, big day for. Super cool. They canceled classes. They busted in volleyball, volleyball teams, high school teams from all over the country. It was just super cool to watch. And they won too. And they won. I was so nervous. I'm like, what if they lose? But they won in three sets. All right. For our second number, you know, those prompts at the checkout counter that ask you to round up to donate to charity. They actually raise a ton of money for nonprofits. I'm talking$749 million worth of donations in 2022, a 24 % increase from 2020.

18:40In one example, Stop and Shop raises$1 to$2 million per month for its breast cancer and food security initiatives. But consumers are getting a bit fatigued because they're conflating these donation prompts with the increase in tipping prompts that are cropping up every time you buy something. So it seems like this year they're pulling back on checkout donations. A recent survey found that the number of consumers who said they donated to charity at the register plummeted from 80 % in 2021 to just 59 % in 2023. Still, I think my takeaway here is just how effective a fundraising mechanism these checkout prompts are.

19:15I know. I was shocked at how big it is and that it's just still increasing up and to the right. Because my take on this was tipping culture has totally fatigued us. Like every time we see that iPad turn around, we're just like less and less inclined to, to, uh, I don't know, increase our monetary expenditure. But yeah, the, these numbers were shocking and I mean, it's for a good cause. So I don't see it stopping anytime. My idea is for, uh, companies to do a Bob Barker focus, uh, focused fundraising campaign where they ask people to just add$1 to their purchase and donate it to an animal rights organization, which we know Bob Barker was a huge advocate for.

19:53So if any business owners are listening to this, I think it would be fun. I think people would do it. You just add a dollar, like how you bet on prices right. And I think it would raise a lot of money for a cool organization. I like that. All right. Well, first of all, there's this fly flying around this studio, and it's so funny. We're just trying to swat it away. So if you hear like a little clap, that means we killed it. All right. For our final number, have you ever considered just how big and powerful wind turbines are? You might have seen them from a distance and thought, hey, that's a pretty big blade.

20:24But the actual numbers might surprise you. Turbines these days extend the length of a football field and are taller than Rockefeller's center. A single rotation of a 107 meter blade on a wind farm in England can power a home for two days. A single rotation. So here's what's going on. And it is not all good, actually. Companies have been rushing to push out new, more powerful turbine models to lower costs. And that's worked great. The cost of wind energy has fallen 60 % from 2011 to 2021. But when you're building blades taller than Big Ben, you're going to run into some engineering snags. And that's what's happening now.

21:00For example, the ships that are used to construct offshore wind farms have become obsolete with about half of the world's entire installation fleet retiring because they can't handle the size. So that's going to require an investment of 13 billion in replacements. So as I've always said, bigger is not always better. and some in the industry want to impose caps or slow down in new models until the current ones have had a chance to get a few laps under the belt. It's just, these things are gigantic. My first thought went to transportation. Like, I don't know. I always thought about the trucks on the highway where like just the super long semi-trucks transporting something or other, but even these can't fit on trucks.

21:38Like it's taller than the Rockefeller Center. So yeah, you're going to need a bigger boat for sure. All right, Neil, let's move on. What do Blades of Glory, Step Brothers, and the other guys all have in common? Yes, they all star Will Ferrell, but they are also stories of enemies who eventually realize their common interests and become friends by the end. Well, we just had a similar, did we just become best friends moment in big tech? This week, the audio company behind JBL Speakers unveiled a smart speaker that simultaneously uses both Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant. You don't even have to manually toggle between the two.

22:14You can ask Alexa to play Morning Brew daily, then follow it up by asking Google to pause it. Historically, big tech has been more interested in building their own walled gardens than playing nice with each other. But this partnership shows that companies are willing to team up if it helps get more smart speakers into homes. The problem for smart home devices is that people just don't really like them. Smart speaker shipments saw their sixth consecutive quarterly drop in the first quarter of this year, plunging by 30%. So, Neil, do we think that this could jumpstart this space again? No. I knew you were going to say that.

22:48No. This is so – smart speakers have been – can I say it? A flop? You can say it. All I use mine for is setting a timer, right? Can I – the chicken, 25 minutes. Like, that's all I use mine for. I don't think adding more into one speaker – a very expensive speaker at that. It's not even an affordable one. It's way more expensive than the actual – you know, what the actual tech companies make themselves. is going to solve this problem. I think they just have to make them better. I don't know why they don't just put in like generative AI features to these voice assistants. I mean, maybe they are, but it seems like they're kind of giving up investing in Alexa and Siri and Google Assistant.

23:28I mean, I don't think that they've fulfilled their promise at all. I don't know whether ChatGPT or all of these large language models can be outfitted with voice commands, but I think it's fair to say that they are kind of backing away from investments and this is just kind of the last gasp. Yeah, I mean, Amazon Alexa's division was reportedly on track to lose$10 billion last year. We are 10 years into this voice assistant experiment and you're right, we haven't seen a ton of progress. I do think eventually an AI assistant's gonna come out that takes us more into that future promised land of kind of like the Tony Stark's of Star Trek's of the world because right now you're right.

24:03Like they're smart assistants, but all people use them for playing music, setting timers, and then like the odd bit of trivia here and there, like, hey, why? Why are orcas hunting and packed or something like that? So it is interesting. And I was digging into like, why would someone want to speak with both of these assistants on it? And some people, it's just a matter of preference, but then also Google is best for general knowledge queries and adding things to your Google calendar. While Alexa, you can track your Alexa, your Amazon packages or listen to an Audible book. And a lot of homes have multiple smart devices.

24:36Like you have your Chromecast, but then you also have your Amazon Alexa. So some people are just, that's why these companies think that it hasn't caught on is because it's just gotten too fractured. So they're kind of teaming up and saying, maybe this will help convert people to the smart device market. There's just so much promise. Remember that South Park episode when they did the smart speakers and they were messing with it? That's very funny. Everyone should watch that. All right. For our last story, I want to teach you all the secrets of living a long and healthy life. Sounds dubious coming from a 32-year-old business podcaster.