Ignorance About Vaping Is Killing People
Pearl-Clutching and Bans Will Only Make It Worse
What if I told you that the reports of people dying and suffering lung complications due to vaping were most likely the result of THC black-market cartridges?
CDC officials reaffirmed on Friday that while they haven’t figured out exactly which chemical or device is making people sick, the majority of the cases in both national and state studies to date appear to involve THC-based vaping products.
What if I told you that vaping-related deaths didn’t exist until now, and thus the culprit must be something specific and insidious?
These products were bought primarily from “informal sources such as friends, family members, illicit dealers, or off the street.” And while there was no brand linked to all the cases, 66 percent of patients reported use of products under the brand name Dank Vapes. Other brands patients most commonly reported using included Moon Rocks, Off White, and TKO.
What if I told you cigarettes have killed possibly millions, and yet we haven’t banned cigarettes from the face of the earth?
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day.
What if I told that only keeping tobacco flavors on the shelves will just create an e-juice prohibition era, or even more cigarette smokers?
Politicians who ban flavors should brace for a surge in smoking and the use of questionable bootleg vaping products — not just by adult vapers but by teens, especially those who vape daily.
What if I told you it’s not the products being bought by responsible adults that are killing people?
The relative safety of e-cigarettes has been recognized abroad. Public Health England, the British equivalent of the CDC, has estimated that e-cigarettes are at least 95 percent less hazardous than conventional cigarettes. Some British hospitals house vape shops, and the month-long national anti-smoking campaign, Stoptober, encourages people to vape instead.
What if I told you the popcorn-lung causing chemical diacetyl in cigarette smoke is hundreds of times more prevalent than in vapor?
To add some perspective here, studies have shown that when diacetyl has been detected in vapor, it was measured at a high 9.0 micrograms. The diacetyl level found in tobacco smoke has been measured at 335.9 micrograms. Cigarette smoke exposes tobacco users to exponentially higher diacetyl levels than e-cigarette vapor that contains diacetyl.
What if I told you that formaldehyde creation via vaping can only occur if mods are pumped up to astronomical levels no human uses?
The untrue talking point that e-cigarette vapor produces formaldehyde stems from a bogus 2015 New England Journal of Medicine article titled “Hidden Formaldehyde in E-Cigarette Aerosols.” Unbeknownst to the public, the researchers used blatantly biased techniques to produce the formaldehyde levels, including overheating the e-cigarette. However, when a different set of researchers (with their ethics intact) recreated the study using normal conditions mimicking how vapers actually use the device, formaldehyde practically absent, and at levels “far below what [cigarette] smokers inhale.” Of course, the authors of the 2015 study made no mention of the significantly higher levels of formaldehyde produced by combustible cigarettes.
What if I told you it’s patently impossible for states who’ve passed flavored e-juice bans to prevent out-of-state vendors from selling and shipping flavored juice?
I called RI’s Department of Health and the actual answers as to how they’d enforce this ‘flavor ban’ were:
“I don’t know, that’s a great question”
“It would be illegal and that’s how we’d enforce it”,
And “talk to this other lady”.
Which means nobody knows even one an iota of a shit as to what they’re doing.
— Me, 2019
What if I told you that going after every reputable digital retailer of vaping products would be an absolute cluster-fuck and checking every single incoming mailed package for flavored juices is impossible?
It would be an absolute cluster-fuck. And it’s impossible.
— Me, 2019
What if I told you the oil that the New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said could be the culprit was NOT found in nicotine-based vape products?
In a statement, New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said on Thursday that the acetate was present in “nearly all cannabis-containing samples” the state tested and in “very high levels,” making it “a key focus” of the state’s investigation. According to Zucker, the oil was not found in nicotine-based vape products that investigators tested, and it is not an approved additive for medical cannabis products
What if I told you that exactly what lawmakers and pearl-clutchers want to prevent — vaping deaths — are what they’ll be causing by boosting the black market into the stratosphere?
Because I just told you all of that, with facts, stats, and sources to back it all up.
Yet still some insist Vaping, as a whole industry, is the problem.
I’m not trying to invalidate the fact that there’s clearly something happening in vaping-land right now. Vaping-born illnesses are concentrated in several states, and have reached past 1400.
33 people have died from mysterious lung diseases related to vaping.
This is a problem. I’m not saying it isn’t.
What I am trying to say is that this is not how we go about tackling a problem like this.
We have to be informed, we have to investigate, and we have to understand what’s happening.
Banning vaping altogether is just like putting a band-aid on someone’s uninjured elbow, while their entire leg has gone necrotic.
We know nicotine e-juice isn’t the culprit, so why do we insist on treating a wound that isn’t real?
We need to suss out the actual distributors of these malignant products and hold them accountable.
We need to focus on solutions, instead of putting out blanket-bans on products that actually help adults quit smoking.
We need to parent our children better, and educate them to make the best decisions possible about their health.
Only when we identify the real problem, and take clear and decisive action against the bad actors at play here, can we squash the root cause of these illnesses and deaths.
And prevent it from ever, ever, ever, ever happening again.
Kira Leigh is a snarky marketing nerd, anime writer, and artist. See her work here and send her a message if you want to work together.
Special thanks to Renato P. dos Santos for his continued support.
