Rash of Vaping Related Hospitalizations Cause Problems for all Involved in Northeast Ohio
Local Vaper Looks Back on Smoking Related Hospital Scare
Carsen works in a high-stress work environment 6 days a week as a beautician and studies business full-time at Kent State University. To cope with the stress, she turned to a rising phenomenon among young people, THC vaping.
According to a recently released CDC report, 29 different patients from 10 different states were hospitalized from the use of THC vaporizers containing a chemical called Vitamin E acetate.
Users of these products often acquire them illegally on the black market in states where marijuana is not legal. Ohio is one of these states and police reports have confirmed at least 3 cases of lung infections linked to the chemical confirmed to be the culprit by the CDC.
Imagine something you use as your source of daily stress relief being the same thing that puts you on the brink of suffocation. Across the country marijuana smokers using THC vaporizers are still risking their health to smoke even as evidence grows to show its danger.
She enjoyed the relaxing sensation she got from it while still being able to work at her job effectively.
“It was somewhat weird to me at first to be under the influence of something at work but being high to me was not the same as being drunk or something like that. I could just step out and act as if I was smoking a cigarette, hit my vape and then step back inside and nobody would know the difference,” said Carsen.
Never much of a marijuana smoker, she was introduced to the vaporizers by friends who boasted of their convenience and effectiveness in delivering the substance. Carsen said that this method of smoking changed her outlook on marijuana.
“I never really smoked real weed because I did not like the smell and taste of it. I had tried it early in high school and did not have good experiences but the vape seemed different. There was a flavoring to it, it didn’t smell, so I tried it.”
Carsen said that the experience with the vaporizer was much for pleasant for her because the dosage of it was small and you could manage how much of it was taken in.
When using these marijuana vaporizers, they often come in counterfeit packages. These packages mimic real dispensary grade brands and are then filled with counterfeit THC oil cut with chemicals sometimes.
These packages describe how to ingest them, and Carsen says the often recommend a dose of “5–10 hits” on the packages. By being able to hit the device only a few times, users can much better manage the exact amount they inhale, down to the milligram.
The so many positives of smoking marijuana this way are outweighed by the double-edged sword of vaping though. It is so convenient that users hit them, a lot.
“I would often go through a cartridge every few days before I would have to cop a new one. It was a somewhat expensive habit after I noticed how much of it, I was really using,” says Carsen.
After months of using these black-market products, Carsen’s source of stress relief finally caught up to her. After having trouble breathing, she cut back on the use of them but not much changed. After 3 days Carsen said she thought she was going to die her chest problems had become so severe.
“It felt like I was trying to breathe under water, I could never get a full breath of air,” said Carsen.
What started as a simple cough had turned into a condition her doctors called “wet lung”, and it almost killed her. Her doctors said that if she had not been seen in the next 48 hours, her lungs could have become too flooded with fluid to sustain her.
“The moment I told them I used a weed vape and I saw their faces, I knew I would never use them again.”
While her cartridges have never been confirmed as the exact culprit of her infections and they were never tested at a lab, she believes it was them that caused her hospitalization.
“I don’t know for sure, but I am not taking the risk. I can do other things so getting high is not really worth the literal breaths that I take,” said Carsen.
*(Carsen’s name has been changed to protect her identity)
