I'm guessing that if this really is associated with vaping then it's likely due to the limited regulation of the ingredients. Bad batch of VG/PG/nicotine? Some problematic flavouring?
I think the best article I've found is at the BMJ: https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5228 - sorry, paywall. Very much inconslusive at the moment completely in the public health triage stage.
Good idea to regulate it properly. I just stopped vaping after a 20 year intermittent tobacco problem + 5 years of vaping[1]. Stopping vaping is massively easier than giving up cigarettes in my experience.
[1] for almost that entire time I just went unflavoured. Less hassle and less potential for contaminants.
Similar story here. Smoked for ten years. Actually found it easy to replace smoking with vaping (strong menthol). Stopped vaping after 1 year because I was suffering from GERD and suspected that vaping was an attributing factor. Since I stopped 5 years ago, my GERD symptoms have more or less disappeared.
I really enjoyed vaping, probably more than smoking, but somehow it did not seem to have the same addictive effect on me as smoking had. I did not find it that hard to stop cold turkey.
I stuck with it for 5 years because I was paranoid about relapse to cigarettes. Spent a couple of weeks in countries where vaping is illegal as a dry run, earlier this year, and then just waited for the juice to run out.
The addictive effect of nicotine seems much enhanced by the addition of a monoamine oxidase compound (ie related to the early antidepressant drugs) - which is present in burning tobacco - which seems to take nicotine from approximately as addictive as caffeine to more addictive than heroin (citation available).
Is it possible vaping did not suppress your appetite like smoking did, and so your stomach created more digestive acids, but you didn't eat more because of habit?
GERD/nicotine has a pretty strong link and it’s cumulative/long-term exposure that increases chances. Probably just a ticking time bomb that went off ;-).
(No offense to the parent poster intended, I likewise have played games with this same time bomb multiple times now)
> somehow it did not seem to have the same addictive effect on me as smoking had
Nicotine by itself isn't much addictive until mixed with stuff called MAOIs. Here's an earlier post of mine that gives a bit more detail https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20536162
snus is tobacco. Tobacco contains MAOIs along with nicotine. Maybe you were complaining that the reference referred to tobacco smoke, but it's reasonable to suppose (though granted, not established) that powdered baccy does as well.
Having used chewing tobacco, I can say it's got a hell of a kick more than plain nicotine tablets.
IQos is calling it "heeting". Yeah, I don't see that taking off. Vape is just a pretty slick word, as words go. It's got everything! Unusual consonants, primates, rhymes with cape... It's gonna be hard to beat.
diacetyl is present in cigarettes at 700x the level of any vaping liquid containing it[1]; besides that there is no actual documented case of a vaper (or smoker) developing popcorn lung; afaik this has only happened to some employees at a popcorn factory. as others in the thread have mentioned, almost all juice manufacturers moved away from using diacetyl after this scare arose a few years ago.
Your understanding is wrong. Cheap vape liquid from dodgy sources years ago used diacetyl. This was quickly discovered and vapers stopped purchasing it and it immediately became prominently listed on pretty much all products what proportion of vegetable glycerin and/or propylene glycol is being used and that those are the only ingredients aside from nicotine and flavoring. If anyone is still using diacetyl they are probably dodgy gas station disposables from China.
"Diketones such as diacetyl, acetoin and acetyl propionyl are present in a number of these flavourings as they add an authentic buttery and creamy taste to the e-liquids produced by many manufacturers."
They said "some". Your comment refers to the possibility that some may still, as in the gas station. That fits the criteria for "some".
The idea that conscious consumers reading ingredient labels will solve 100% of such a problem is also kind of silly. Look at the obesity problem as an example of how well labeling works - it's possible to read the labels and be careful about your food intake, but most do not.
This article has a sentence touching on it, but other sources that almost all these cases of vaping related hospitalizations are from vaping THC, so the sourcing/manufacturing of the product is highly suspect. Who knows what drug dealers are using.
It bothers me greatly to read so many news stories that have conspicuous absences of factual information. If there was a legitimately dangerous product on the market it would be critically important to share exactly what products, brands, etc are affected in what regions.
Imagine if we woke up to news stories saying eggs were contaminated by salmonella. And nothing else. Just a blanket fearmongering piece about eggs across the board with no mention of which producer in which region was affected, no information about what timespan the affected eggs were purchased in, nothing. Just 'people are getting sick from eggs and doctors cant guarantee you aren't next!'
> It bothers me greatly to read so many news stories that have conspicuous absences of factual information. If there was a legitimately dangerous product on the market it would be critically important to share exactly what products, brands, etc are affected in what regions.
Exactly this. Someone has just died, and spokespeople from official organizations whose very job is protecting public health seem to be playing some sort of a secrecy game. Pardon me if this sounds conspiratorial, but I have a feeling the way this is being handled has some financial motivation behind it. If not, then why not just tell the whole truth of what is known?
EDIT: on the bright side, several reporters seem to be onto their game, but officials are doing a fantastic coordinated job of playing dumb farmer. I imagine the strategy is to let this stretch out for as long as possible then let the media sensation wither and release the facts when no one's paying attention anymore.
iirc THC was being used by a number of people affected, but they haven't yet gone as far as saying that "almost all these cases of vaping related hospitalizations are from vaping THC".
You are right, the national stories say many are THC, not most or all. I was conflating it with a local California story, where in Kings county where 8 people were hospitalized, and all had been tied to CBD oil:
The Kings County Department of Public Health, in rural central California, said it identified eight patients between ages 18 and 60 who developed lung illness after vaping products with CBD oils they had bought from unlicensed vendors.
So I've been saying something like this for years now. HOW do we know something is not going wrong without any long term/clinical data (ESPECIALLY around these custom flavours that people sometimes roll out themselves)?
I think it's completely presumptuous when people tout vaping as being much safer than cigarettes. We didn't all wake up one day knowing smoking was bad - it was a long road filled with politics, science and data.
Vaping is in its infancy and already people's mantras sound like old Camel commercials.
- smoking is an exceptionally harmful habit, so just by coming up with any other activity at random one is likely to end up healthier
- this also means advising smokers to switch to vaping even without knowing the health effects of vaping makes sense
- marketing vaping to non-smokers should be severely limited though
- marketing vaping to kids like juul does, should be downright illegal
do/did they actually do this? I did a quick Google search and I can find a lot of articles making this claim but the only evidence given is that they have twenty-somethings and bright colors in their ads. if this is "marketing to kids", then that bar seems awfully low.
> Last summer, with public concern about teenage vaping growing, Juul Labs paid a charter school organization in Baltimore $134,000 to set up a five-week summer camp to teach children healthy lifestyles.
> The curriculum was created by Juul — maker of the very vaping devices that were causing the most alarm among parents, health experts and public officials.
> In April 2017, a Juul representative visited the Dwight School in New York City to meet with students — with no teachers present — and told them the company’s e-cigarettes were “totally safe.”
>> In April 2017, a Juul representative visited the Dwight School in New York City to meet with students — with no teachers present — and told them the company’s e-cigarettes were “totally safe.”
this one is pretty damning, but it's only one occurrence. I doubt NYT would have held back if they had any more such anecdotes to offer.
as for the rest of the article, the education programs seem a bit sketchy, but they could just as easily be a poorly conceived PR campaign.
> but they could just as easily be a poorly conceived PR campaign.
We have decades of experience with terrible tobacco and alcohol companies and that's pretty persuasive that Juul knew what they were doing and didn't care.
you are correct; people just get rightly alarmed that it took off with high school students. their marketing is pretty typical in that it’s aimed at young people but i’ve never seen anything particularly nefarious.
> switch to vaping even without knowing the health effects of vaping makes sense
That is exactly my point. You're presuming it's healthier, yea? If you can link to any proper long term study saying that, I'd be more than happy to agree with this.
Honestly, I think switching from something which WILL kill you to something which might have as-yet-undiscovered long term health implications is an absolute win.
Not nearly as much of a win as not inhaling any smoke or vapor at all though. If vaping is a path to quitting altogether then that can be a win. If it's just a different vice then no. It's probably never going to be 100% safe to inhale foreign substances into your lungs
>Not nearly as much of a win as not inhaling any smoke or vapor at all though.
Of course, but that's not a practical expectation for most smokers. We have decades of evidence showing that quitting is HARD and that many (most?) will fail. "Just stop" isn't a solution.
I used to smoke a pack a day and quit about 14 years ago using the patch. Quitting is ultimately the only solution. "Keep smoking" just means eventually dying from a smoking related illness.
That's great for you, but we have plenty of evidence that the patch doesn't work for a lot of people. It's also expensive. It didn't work for me because I enjoy the act of smoking.
Sure, but that's like arguing that cars shouldn't have airbags because in rare circumstances airbags can cause deaths, and riding in a car will never be 100% safe.
> If vaping is a path to quitting altogether then that can be a win. If it's just a different vice then no.
No? Even if you don't quit, it's still almost certainly a health win to switch to vaping from cigarettes. If it's a path to quitting for you that's great. Even if someone is not going to quit them, switching is still good.
> Vaping is in its infancy and already people's mantras sound like old Camel commercials.
I agree. I'm one of the people who managed to quit smoking using vaping and at one point I had some sort of awakening. After vaping for a couple of years I stopped and asked myself what the hell am I doing? I had countless mods, juices, RDAs, RTAs, etc.. and was a frequent contributor to the electronic_cigarette subreddit. I replaced a vice (I hated) with a hobby and was part of a cult (1). But at least I knew I was taking full responsibility for it. I knew the wattages, coil materials and what went into my juice. Most people buying stuff from gas stations or shady online retailers don't always know what they're doing (see for example the battery venting incidents).
And I stopped. I got rid of everything, vaped only unflavored juice for a while and quit altogether. After a couple of years, I ended up on the electronic_cigarette subreddit again and I was legitimately scared of what I was reading. It's a bubble. 'big tobacco' conspiracies, all doctors advising people to stop vaping are quacks, downplaying all sorts of issues (batteries venting due to shady mod soldering, hardware from China advertised as stainless steel which rusts, silica coils etc..). And nothing would change their minds. Even online vendors have these big-ass disclaimers that they won't take any responsibility for the health effects of their products but that too is classified as a plain old 'CYA' policy so you know.. nothing to worry about. Also, now they're vaping nic salts? WTF is that?
In this particular case, my personal opinion is that was definitely something seriously bad in the juice these people were vaping so I wouldn't panic just yet. Contrary to popular belief, I still believe that the CDC will get the job done and figure out the root cause. It reminds me of the time people started smoking bath salts and ended up in the ER where doctors initially didn't know what to make of it.
But I wouldn't bet any money that in a couple of years we won't find some weird/horrible side effect of vaping which appears only after prolonged use. Let's not forget that people did not get sick from cigarettes instantly...
(1) Small cult checklist:
- The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its ideology
- Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished
- The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself
- The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality (see analog smokers)
- The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members (converting friends/family with starter kits)
you make some good points here, especially regarding the wide range of quality available in the vape market (gas station cig-a-likes vs rda with coils and juice you made yourself) and the echo chamber of r/electronic_cigarette, but I do want to point out that nic salts are not some scary weird thing.
alkaloids (like nicotine) all have freebase and salt forms. usually the freebase has a lower boiling point, while the salt is more stable and will dissolve more readily in water. neither is inherently more dangerous than the other, but can yield different levels of efficiency depending how the drug is administered. I'm not sure exactly what advantage salts have over freebase for vaping; I would think the lower boiling point would be advantageous.
salts in vaping have less ‘hit’ (tingling sensation in the throat) and higher but slower absorption efficiency. i actually prefer freebase because it gives more feedback about the level of nicotine i’m taking in instead of accidentally pushing my blood pressure up noticeably five minutes later
Keep in mind that the main issue with cigarettes is what is in them: Carncinogens. Not just anything gives cancer. If something doesn't have carcinogens, like vapes, it doesn't cause cancer.
And, as far as I know, the cancer bit is what makes cigarettes so bad.
> And, as far as I know, the cancer bit is what makes cigarettes so bad.
Not only. The cancer is the long game. The shorter game is the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Nicotine is one of the culprits, not the generic 'carcinogens' which you only find in cigarettes.
> As the mechanism is unknown, it’s unclear what the actual danger is. Is it some byproduct of the nicotine cartidges, or THC ones? Is it the vapor itself? Is it only at certain temperatures or concentrations? Is it directly affecting the lungs or entering the bloodstream? No one knows yet — all they’ve seen is an sudden uptick in respiratory or pulmonary issues where the sufferer also uses vaping products.
We've seen a few studies suggesting certain flavoring agents may cause significant problems, has this been investigated as a possible cause?
Most modern vaping devices use coils made of 316 grade stainless steel, which has no copper content. Unless you're doing something really stupid, the release of metal particles should be within OSHA limits by several orders of magnitude.
i have to disagree. you're both wrong. the most common in all coils is Kanthal A1. If your building your own coils then NI200 is quite popular atm, but most tank and coil systems use Kanthal.
I vape - I buy only high quality liquids from a reputable manufacturer who extensively test all of their recipes. I find my lung function is 100x better than when I smoked.
I did, however, once buy a THC liquid, from a “reputable” dark web dealer. It was bloody awful - found myself retching and hacking for days after a few small tokes, and it destroyed both the coil and the tank - sticky residue, carbon, bleurgh.
So... given that the other symptoms mentioned are vomiting and diarrhoea, I think this is going to transpire to be dodgy THC liquids, as this also sounds like Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome.
Let's not confuse reputable with anything healthy, which is the danger of some of your statements, both quoted and unquoted. The largest tobacco manufacturers were reputable, but that didn't stop them from killing people.
Ex-smoker. The bad tobacco was so much worse, but it didn’t make the good tobacco healthy. It was just smoother and tasted better. It’s no “healthier”.
Yeah... there is currently a global issue with lab results. A client of mine (large multinational healthcare products manufacturer) recently sent the same part to five different labs owned by the same very large lab test provider, around the globe, and got radically different results. The Chinese ones passed everything, as did the US ones - the EU ones failed the part on RoHS, as did their own tests on it - BPA over the allowed threshold.
Buy from a European supplier - testing is mandatory and all e-cigarette products must be registered with the national healthcare regulator prior to sale. It's not an ironclad guarantee of safety, but we have an effective regulatory regime.
The only good way is somehow lucking out and finding an independent researcher that tests them without financial incentive from the company. Otherwise typically the findings will always be on favor because companies request preliminary data and pull funding to continue research if it looks bad so it doesn't get published
Keep in mind that “vapor” is used to disguise that, in all cases whether nicotine or pot or etc, people are heating up a substance to its smoke point and inhaling that smoke. They use “vapor” because it sounds like “water vapor” - which is harmless - but it’s definitely not that.
Marijuana cartridges use marijuana oil or MCT oil as a base, for example. Nicotine uses glycol or other substances.
We have very little data on consuming glycol and/or MCT oil smoke. It’s possible that it clogs up the lungs in a way that takes hours to heal per inhalation, and so we’re simply seeing smoke inhalation deaths as we would from an oil factory burning for weeks or something.
(We have limited data on marijuana extract smoke - cold-processed oil is a new-ish innovation, compared to resin which is high in impurities and not easy to consume in significant quantities like marijuana oil apparently is.)
> Keep in mind that “vapor” is used to disguise that, in all cases whether nicotine or pot or etc, people are heating up a substance to its smoke point and inhaling that smoke. They use “vapor” because it sounds like “water vapor” - which is harmless - but it’s definitely not that.
This is not true. It's producing an aerosol, partially by condensation of vapor produced by heating the glycerine and propylene glycol mixture to its boiling point.
It isn't combusting, at least not when everything is working the way that it should, and so is not properly a "smoke".
Ultrasonic atomization. It's used widely in manufacturing for applying thin-film coatings, because it provides a very consistent and controllable spray of very fine droplets. The technology has been applied to vaping by Usonicig, but it's not hugely popular - most people prefer warm vapour.
I'm not a vape guy, but as far as I'm aware no combustion reaction is occurring, essentially it's boiling the substance at a far lower temperature than it would burn.
Now, whether glycol and such are good things to inhale is another question but I haven't seen any studies pointing to significant issues with these directly, so I'm hesitant to jump the the conclusion suggested here.
> Propylene glycol has been used in asthma inhalers
Do you have evidence for that claim? Because as an asthmatic, I've never encountered an inhaler that contained PG. Apparently it can be used in nebulisers, but unlike inhalers and e-cigs, a nebuliser isn't being used every day.
From another source on a vaping story, for those who want to follow the thread of concern even regardless of my bad understanding:
> One exam, though, picked up something unusual — evidence of abnormal immune cells in his lungs — generally associated with a rare, potentially deadly pneumonia seen in older people who accidentally inhale droplets from oil-based laxatives like mineral oil.
“Vaping” can often mean people filling mod boxes (not Juuls) with any sort of juice containing anything. Articles and studies often include any random juice in any random shop, so there are endless unknowns.
Juuls and many other pens contain limited ingredients, namely nicotine and propylene glycol. We already know what nicotine does.
Propylene glycol is food safe and is also used in albuterol asthma inhalers.
Vaping fumes trigger my asthma, there is all sorts of stuff in the second hand smoke. The smoking ban in the UK basically stopped me being admitted to hospital every few years and I appreciate that most bars/clubs have banned vaping inside (certainly in London).
I vape and I'm with you in that we cannot just assume it's benign. You do have to be careful of some studies which have shown things like Formaldehyde though as the conditions (far too hot, burning cotton, etc.) we just wrong.
That said, would excessive water vapor trigger an attack? Water based fog machines have been known to[1], but are harmless for most people. The flavorings can add all sorts of bad crap though.
I don't really know about fog machines. I've certainly had asthma in an environment with fog machines but people were also smoking and that's a definite trigger.
I was on a train a few years ago and had a very weird rapid-onset asthma attack while sitting down. I could feel something weird in the air and taste something very bitter. I looked around and someone was vaping behind me. You're not allowed to vape on UK trains so I guess they turned the "smoke" down? There was no visible cloud. Could easily be a coincidence but the lack of regulation for the "carrier" chemicals is a bit worrying.
Juuls contain a mixture of nicotine salts and presumably other alkaloids extracted from the tobacco plant. Very different in effect from pure nicotine.
Just like smoking it's important that those 10yrs have context around the deaths, assuming they ramp up, it's not just all vape usage = high risk. It's how you use it too.
I personally quit smoking cigarettes and moved from 24mg->3mg of nicotine over a few months (with zero withdrawl symptoms). 3mg is about as low as you can go. You can't do that with smoking cigarettes, "light" cigarettes is mostly just a flavour profile with only small differences in health and nicotine levels.
With cigarettes there were plenty of people who smoked a pack or two a day, those people on a 20yr span are at a higher risk. You see some people who smoke these massive vape clouds and they smoke constantly with high nicotine counts + high heat. Those are all voluntary options and the devices/juice is getting better with time.
Currently nicotine salts are taking over in vape shops, which are smaller devices, smaller amounts of liquid but higher nicotine-liquid ratios, and they have a much smaller exhale clouds which I find easier on the chest and way less anti-social when outside (the exhaled cloud is 10-50% of the size of a normal cigarette, and way smaller than traditional vapes).
Finally, there's second-hand smoke. There was a study showing vape smoke creates extremely small or non-existent second-hand transmission compared to cigarettes. Cigarette smoke stays in the air in a inhale-able state far longer.
> According to Drexel University toxicology expert Igor Burstyn, while the contents of e-cig vapor inhaled by users “justifies surveillance,” there is so little contamination in exhaled vapor that there is unlikely to be any risk.
A whole lot of society and social policy is about lesser of evils. It's about being realistic and practical. Which is something far more policy should be conscious of, instead of some idealistic perfect world you wish to impose on other people.
Not to mention people could just as quickly harm themselves going to a 7/11 every day to eat carbs or driving a motorcycle or drinking alcohol or engaging in 'extreme' sports. But we people do those things anyway even though there's plenty of science to show it's dumb.
Especially if those 'evils' are a) entirely non-violent and voluntary only affecting the individual and b) are not going away ala drugs and the giant shift towards harm reduction.
People seem to be mixing up the growing pains of a extremely fast-growing new industry and the long-term realities once the legal, health, business, and administrative systems mature and adapt. The rush to immediately ban everything, well before we fully understand it and/or have experimented with less freedom/fun-destroying strategies, while also accurate measures of usage and risk, doesn't help anyone.
I will admit though, the 'think of the kids' people are making quite an effective stir.
> Not to mention people could just as quickly harm themselves going to a 7/11 every day to eat carbs or driving a motorcycle or drinking alcohol or engaging in 'extreme' sports.
Motorcycling feels odd in that list of otherwise self-inflicted harms.
Sure, one can run into brick wall in a solo accident. But, often it's someone else that kills the motorcyclist.
Technicality. You're still putting yourself into a situation that's known to have a high likelihood of resulting in your serious injury or death.
You're talking like if you were to run across a live gun range and get shot it's not really your fault, but instead it was the shooter that killed you.
That may be technically true but you knew the risks were basically a certainty and chose to do it anyway.
It certainly seems like the vape industry set back social progress on this front significantly. Cigarettes stopped being cool quite a while ago, and smoking is almost never allowed indoors anymore, but hey, look these e-cigarettes are safe and trendy and all the cool kids are doing them.
I think the harm is probably in the re-normalisation of nicotine addiction.
I smoked for a long time, and went on a vape recently, but the ads everywhere (in Ireland/UK) for various vaping services and devices are pretty concerning.
For me, it's harm reduction, but if non-smokers start vaping, that's a net loss.
I think vaping is a genuine improvement, provided that the law treats it like it does tobacco, i.e. no advertising, age restrictions, etc. This is an anecdote, but in countries where those restrictions are in place, just about every vaper seems to be an ex-smoker, and nobody thinks vaping is cool or attractive.
> Walking behind someone who was vaping recently is one of the least pleasant experiences I’ve had for a while.
Worse than walking behind a smoker? Both my mother and a very good friend of mine smoke and I outright told them: you can vape around me, but don't smoke in my presence. I can't stand the smell.
Why would there be a "ramp up" period. The number of vapes is going up rapidly, but the death rate would likely stay the same unless someone started suddenly spiking the vape liquid with lead or something. If anything it would go down as the possible culprits causing deaths are discovered and eliminated.
I don't smoke or vape. I think the world is way better off vaping than smoking. I certainly do hope whatever caused this is discovered. I would hate to see more cigarettes light up again.
I'm guessing (and hoping) that more regulation will come down on the vaping industry to make sure whatever oils or additives are controlled so that we can prevent this from happening with future additives they discover.
We've seen it plenty of times when a product comes out and people with an agenda to make money off it say "buy this, it works" and then decades later it is discovered to have been toxic or harmful in some way.
Especially given the nature of this product, skepticism should be the default position.
Remember when the news constantly threw out countless articles about cell phones causing brain cancer? Remember, fear sells ads, so we should also be very skeptical of articles like these.
The big kicker is people didn't start all types of vaping 3 months ago. My guess is this is some sort of contaminated something (with a biological agent).
Heavy metal, lead, asbestos, radium, etc. don't cause 100+ people to be hospitalized in the span of three months, they work over decades.
There are tens of millions of people vaping across the world that have been at it for years, why the massive panic now that there is an isolated epidemic, especially since it is specifically linked to adulterated clandestine black-market products, and not to legitimate, laboratory-tested products?
I was shocked by the "no vaping in public parks". I just can't believe that attitude towards non-harming social behaviors. Cigarettes at least had the excuse of the cigarette butts.
Then again, you typically can't drink a beer on a park bench in America, either. Sad state of "freedom" to be honest.
The town I went to college in lacked an open container law from 8am->2am (mostly they didn't want people to continue drinking while bars were closed). It was....entirely fine? We'd sometimes get drinks at the bar then walk home with them and this was entirely legal.
This town had other problems but I'm not sure if this was one of them.
frankly I don't know, but the US seems to be taking a very different approach than other western countries. most countries in Europe seem to be taking a much more measured approach, with some of the state health agencies unequivocally recommending vapes for smoking cessation.
generally, the US seems to be much more permissive towards citizens making bad health decisions (including much tamer warnings on cigarette packs) so I think it's worth asking why vaping is an exception. it makes me at least a little suspicious, although I'm not sure who to point the finger at now that big tobacco companies are acquiring stakes in vape companies.
as a final aside, consider how absurd it is that vapes are banned in SF but you can still buy actual cigarettes at any convenience store.
Completely agree. The case was clearly a result of bad ingredients -- yet it has been flogged by the media and prohibitionists as proof that vaping is just as dangerous as tobacco.
I, for one, embrace vapetopia -- the cognitive libertarian's dream of mental states on demand.
> The case was clearly a result of bad ingredients
The fact that California is also seeing incidents would seem to argue against this at least somewhat.
It's certainly possible for this to be bad ingredients, but most of the cannabis-based stuff is mostly legal in California, so there's a decent negative feedback loop if you supply people with garbage.
I disagree with your last point. Up until the very recent explosion of 'pod mods' following the success of Juul, THC cartridges were (and still in a lot of cases are) most likely to be using CE4 style atomisers, or cartomisers/clearomisers, or any other technology that was in the process of being replaced due it being dated back when I started vaping over 5 years ago. Even now these THC cartridges are taking something with the viscosity of honey and sticking it into devices designed specifically for nicotine containing VG/PG.
This entire setup for vaping THC IS garbage. It's just more convenient and cheaper than the products designed specifically for THC methods
There's a very toxic part of our society who wants to control what millions other people do, "for their own good." This type of article is a dog whistle to those type of people.
I’d worry about the excipients (e.g. PGA). Several molecular weights are deemed GRAS (“Generally Recognized As Safe”) thus their use is unregulated (of course as bulk polymers, “molecular weight” is really just the fat part of the distribution).
The problem is at point of use: the vehicle is vaporized by a simple heated nichrome wire. This fractionates and agglomerates the polymers resulting in a completely different distribution of polymer weights. The results of which aren’t being analyzed.
I’m less interested in speculation and more interested in the CDCs claims once it’s investigation has been concluded. Please do note that the claim specifically posits there exists a cluster of illnesses associated with vaping and that one person has died from it- not that only one person had ever had this disease. This makes it interesting. I hope the cause can be founds soon, given The popularity of vaping in teens.
“We do know that e-cigarettes do not emit a harmless aerosol,” he explained. “There’s a variety of harmful ingredients identified, including things like ultrafine particulates, heavy metals like lead and cancer causing chemicals. And flavoring used in e-cigarettes to give it a buttery flavor, diacetyl, it’s been related to severe respiratory illness.”
"People often assume that these e-liquids are a final product once they are mixed. But the reactions create new molecules"
I smoked cigarettes for about 25 years and switched to vaping about 5 years ago. My anecdata is it's the flavorings which are most harmful. I had a pretty consistent cough from cigarettes which got a little better after switching to vapes, but it really depended on the flavor. Some flavors were much more harsh and the cough would return. It didn't go away until I switched to completely unflavored juice.
However you look at this the take away from it all should be:
Get a vape and liquid from a large reputable supplier (keep receipts) and should we suddenly find that this is the next product to have warning and danger signs slapped all over due to health concerns, you have a large reputable supplier you can sue, ala the original tobacco scandals.
Exactly, but for those that do pursue such activities, that would be the prudent approach. Though I wouldn't count it as a pension plan as some may well do :/. Though if you ever do get a pension annuity plan, apparently smoking whilst you fill out the form and filling in that aspect, does get you more money and one of those area's that could be classed as gaming the system. Why that is - well, they expect you to die sooner, hence you get a better rate compared to somebody who their actuaries expect to live say 20 years longer and curtail paying out more over a longer period. Also one of those exceptions in which bad health, or perceived bad health works in your favour.
Awesome, can’t wait to replicate the resounding successes of alcohol and drug prohibition. Alcohol usage dropped to zero throughout the 1920s and there were no unintended consequences right?
Likely nobody can say with any amount of certainty.
There are vaporizers and liquids to treat very cautiously. Many materials you could make a vaporizer and especially the heating assembly would include hazardous offgassing.
Likewise you would want to be very careful about knowing the source and content of liquids. They are essentially unregulated.
Strangers on the internet selling you ingest to make a small amount of money are not particularly trustworthy.
The materials it is made of will still vaporize themselves a bit and what they are and how it is constructed still can have health impacts. Not that they will or won't, but that they could and it's hard to trust anyone.
Worth noting that the author makes a significant claim without any citation:
> That vaping works as a way to quit smoking... seems clear.
Studies have been fairly limited so far, given the recency of e-cigarettes (relative to science's timescale). And the studies that we have seem pretty mixed: some showing benefit over other accepted smoking cessation methods, some not. Some showing higher relapse rates in the e-cigarette group. Nothing about that seems clear to me.
I think the best article I've found is at the BMJ: https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5228 - sorry, paywall. Very much inconslusive at the moment completely in the public health triage stage.
Good idea to regulate it properly. I just stopped vaping after a 20 year intermittent tobacco problem + 5 years of vaping[1]. Stopping vaping is massively easier than giving up cigarettes in my experience.
[1] for almost that entire time I just went unflavoured. Less hassle and less potential for contaminants.