Vaping Is Suspected In Severe Lung Illnesses (theverge.com) 166
U.S. health authorities from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the cases of 153 people, mostly teenagers and young adults, who developed several lung illnesses after using electronic cigarettes (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source). The Wall Street Journal reports: The cases have occurred in 16 states over the past two months, with many of the injured rushing to emergency rooms with difficulty breathing and other symptoms. No deaths have been reported, but some patients were so ill they spent days in intensive-care units on mechanical ventilators, the health authorities said. What exactly is causing the acute illnesses is unknown, though health experts suspect vaping plays a role. Vaping refers to the use of an electronic cigarette to inhale.
Many of the injured have told doctors or health authorities they were vaping products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, a key ingredient in marijuana, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is working with state health departments to identify the cause. At least some of the products were purchased from unlicensed sellers. "Investigators have not identified any specific product or compound that is linked to all cases," the CDC said in a statement. The Food and Drug Administration said it is testing e-cigarette products that the patients used. The health effects of vaping any product, even a well-known brand name, are under research and not yet fully known, tobacco researchers said.
Many of the injured have told doctors or health authorities they were vaping products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, a key ingredient in marijuana, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is working with state health departments to identify the cause. At least some of the products were purchased from unlicensed sellers. "Investigators have not identified any specific product or compound that is linked to all cases," the CDC said in a statement. The Food and Drug Administration said it is testing e-cigarette products that the patients used. The health effects of vaping any product, even a well-known brand name, are under research and not yet fully known, tobacco researchers said.
Let's be a little more clear here.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They assume a causative link between people who have vaped hash oil purchased on the black or grey market. There's none for people who have vaped nicotine/PG/glycerin fluids. The jury is still out on the safety the aforementioned, especially with flavoring additives.
Surely if the amount of people that vape as a replacement for tobacco products, were smoking, there would be significantly more people with health issues than 100.
I'd say the title is clickbait.
Re:Let's be a little more clear here.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worse, it's a hatchet job.
Let's translate. Drinking water suspected in a hundred hospitalizations. 100 teens added a random flavoring from some chinese sounding company that they bought from a guy in a van to their water.
So, what is the danger here? Drinking water, of course. So the lesson here is never drink water.
As evidence, I point to millions of people who have vaped daily (not using the grey market THC) that have never had a breathing problem, much less one requiring intensive care. Also the many many people who routinely consume THC in various forms with a similar lack of hospitalization.
Stay tuned for a barage of headlines in the general form of Teen struck by train, dies. He reportedly vaped just one week prior. Another tragic vaping related death!
Re:Let's be a little more clear here.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference being the effects of drinking water are well understood, whereas the effects of vaping in general are not and especially so for more exotic sources and compounds.
Re:Let's be a little more clear here.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda like drinking water with various exotic compounds added hasn't been well studied.
We know enough about vaping to know that acute effects resulting in hospitalization don't happen unless you add something really toxic to your vape. Big surprise, if you huff bear spray, you're gonna have a bad time. Doesn'tr it strike you as being just an eentsy weentsy bit odd that with millions vaping daily for over a decade, we just now hear about a 'mini-epidemic' of teens needing intensive care? Any explaination other than a toxic contaminant would be quite the extraordinary claim.
Of course, even plain water can kill if you drink way too much.
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Correct; however, the general public is being told that vaping is new, that it's picking up teens, that Juul is an evil peddler of death to brown kids (CONGRESS has investigated Juul because vaping is dangerous), and so forth.
Imagine if 98% of the population thought global warming was probably a hoax. WE know--the science is clear--but then a headline "VOLCANO RELEASES TONS OF CO2, WINTER COLD THAT YEAR" shows up. What happens? 98% of the population nod and take in one more fact: that CO2 emissions h
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I always thought of these "hatchet jobs" as a way for Big Tobacco to ruin the companies they envy, like Juul. Once beaten close to death they will purchase them and suddenly all the bad press and FDA investigations will disappear.
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Hmm, effects of vaping...given that people have been vaping for more than ten years, and that an estimated 30M+ people do it, it's pretty unlikely that vaping is going to suddenly break out in unusual new lung issues in and of itself...
So, what's different now? I am thinking that if OTC whatever-you-call-what-you-load-into-your-ecig caused problems like this, it wouldn't be making the n
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It's worse, it's a hatchet job.
Let's translate. Drinking water suspected in a hundred hospitalizations....
Flint Michigan?
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This is unethical journalism. The headline says something that is clearly not determined, and not the point. If you went to Home Depot and put mineral spirits in your vape pen, it would not be "Vaping causes idiot death", it would be "idiot huffs the shit out of petroleum distillate solvents using vape pen, dies immediately".
This is like the journalist that followed up on a rape case this week with "BREAKING NEWS: SUSPECT WAS A HONDURAN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT!" ...that has what relevance? No relevance. A
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This is unethical journalism. The headline says something that is clearly not determined, and not the point.
The headlines from the two linked articles (as well as the slashdot pst) are "Vaping Is Suspected in Severe Lung Illnesses" and "More than 100 vapers have contracted a severe lung disease, per CDC". Both of these statements are clearly true, that people have gotten sick and that some people suspect vaping as a contributing factor. Neither of the headlines claim that vaping has been determined to be the cause of these illnesses. What specifically is unethical about the reporting in these articles?
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The details in the article suggest the sickness is a result of inhaling a vaporized THC product which was obtained through non-regulated supply channels and is of unknown chemical composition.
Imagine if the headline said, "Beer Suspected In Kidney Failure Cases", only for the article to mention that the beer in question was a homebrew obtained from a seller in a back alley, suspected to have been "enhanced with wormwood" by using an industrial solvent to extract the wormwood, thus contaminating the beer w
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It's unethical because it's a form of propaganda known as "yellow journalism". It's not printing outright lies, that would be wrong and probably illegal (slander, etc.) but it's _conflating_ two true things in such a way as to _infer_ that they are bad. That correlation is what's wrong. It's an old "news" trick to throw out a baseless accusation in the form of a question; i.e. "Have you stopped beating your wife?" And when taken to task about it, the "journalist" replies "Hey, I'm just asking questions
Re:Let's be a little more clear here.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article seems accurate. There are a number of cases, it's being investigated.
OK, may or may not be a causal relationship. No data.
As evidence, I point to millions of people who have vaped daily (not using the grey market THC) that have never had a breathing problem...
Unless you can point to a controlled study-- or even an uncontrolled study-- this is scientifically meaningless. "We didn't see any results in data we didn't look at" is a statement that doesn't give you any information.
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If a sober driver gets distracted by a billboard of a scantily clad model holding a glass of vodka and so crashes into a tree, it is *technically* correct to say that "alcohol was involved", but ...
As for the rest, you claim we just somehow didn't notice many thousand people ending up in intensive care for an extended period over the last 10 years until just now?
I will point out that the headline is also not the result of a scientific study.
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The denial is strong here...
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"Slashdot being click bait shocking."
At least it's not news from 25 years ago.
Re:Let's be a little more clear here.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not quite clickbait in that the vaping is the suspected cause. However, there is something out there being sold which is causing this. Someone is either counterfeiting a product, or is distributing something new. Either way, it's clearly unusually toxic. The question is whether or not it's intentional
I've been tracking this in the news for a few days, and it seems like the damage is
The above misleading quote is from The Verge's article. It would only not be surprising if most vape users were underage, which is not supported by the data. Someone is selling this stuff under the table to underage users, who can't reliably get it even indirectly from legitimate sellers. When/if this gets tracked down, I would bet good money it's some underground distributor cutting corners
Re: Let's be a little more clear here.. (Score:2)
The above misleading quote is from The Verge's article. It would only not be surprising if most vape users were underage, which is not supported by the data.
Well, to be fair, the idiot writing for The Verge also confused himself by misunderstanding a quote from a linked article and then claiming that 27% of highschoolers vape. Obviously he's not the brightest guy in that organization, but his mangling of the stats does explain why he wasn't surprised.
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Pretty much this. Mix this stuff yourself in untested ways or buy on black or grey market and you are basically doing human testing. My guess would be that none of those doing this have any real clue how difficult and how much effort the usual safety tests involve. Also, may well just be some that wanted more of a "kick" and overdid it. If it is mostly teenagers and young adults, that would not surprise me at all. Appreciation for risk takes some maturity.
You are right about the acute symptoms (Score:3)
So far it's a little ambiguous as the reports are not comprehensive but from what has been revealed in some cases grey market hash oil was involved. That sort of this is also perhaps consistent of the seemingly sudden emergence of this phenomena.
One the other hand other studies are emerging which show measurable and instant changes in blood vessels upon vaping unadulterated vape liquids. As well as the presence of irritants in the combustion products. These sorts of things are potential long term hazards
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There are no combustion products in PG; VG can have combustion products, and people use a mix of VG and PG to ensure it all vaporizes below the VG combustion level.
Irritants are generally harmless, but persistent irritants can be dangerous. For example: silicon dust (glass dust) in the lungs dissolves and is consumed by the body; while asbestos dust doesn't and causes cancer. Constant exposure to silicon dust can cause long-term health impacts, while acute exposure below a certain level won't.
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Also largely depends on who you are in terms of effect.
It's easy for me to brush off cigarettes as dangerous, for example, when my grandmother lived to almost 90 while having smoked most of her life.
I don't really like tobacco, and so don't smoke cigarettes. Often times it's the trash by-products they shove into it that *truly* make the stuff toxic. Like most things we don't grow and prepare ourselves, really.
Disclaimer**: I'm very aware cigarettes are noxious things and am certainly not vouching for them h
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You assume too much. Lung issues often go unreported until folks get shortness of breath, night sweats, or chronic cough. I happen to be quite informed about the subject, unfortunately, due to my IPF. Yeah, IPF is fatal and incurable, with an average lifespan of 3 or so years after diagnosis. Why you folks would defend ANY unnecessary inhalation of anything is beyond me.
There are many ways vaping can damage lungs. Too high a temperature, toxic metals in the vape heater, or just a natural propensity towar
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Why you folks would defend ANY unnecessary inhalation of anything is beyond me.
A mix of individual liberty and risk analysis. Severely-unlikely risk: ignore. Moderate, persistent risk: Regulate. Risk to others around user: prohibit in public spaces. Severe risk: no amount of labeling and regulation is going to stop consumers from killing themselves--salespeople are good at winding their way around that and convincing people that the warnings are overblown or the risks are lower than reality; straight ban that shit from sale.
Working in a wood shop exposes you to sawdust (I f
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So I guess we should ban internal combustion engines right now (or better, yesterday). And paint, and practically any household cleaner, perfume and cologne, dryer sheets, herbs and spices, etc.
Re: Let's be a little more clear here.. (Score:2)
It's guessing with so little info (Score:5, Informative)
Without knowing more details it's hard guessing, but my bet is on taking in too high doses of nicotine. It's easy to 'overdose' yourself with vapes, especially with the higher mg/ml liquids. And regulations demanding to sell only small bottles actually push to norm upward; 3-6mg/ml is normal, but a lot of liquids contain 18-20mg/ml.
Now, combine such vape liquid with herbal extracts from certain plants, stuff that people will use a lot, and they are likely to intoxicate themselves with the nicotine. Of course, on could use a base liquid without any nicotine to consume THC, and one should, but the added nicotine gives extra taste and effect.
Without knowing more details, it's hard guessing as it could be anything else, including non-food or -pharmaceutical grade base liquids or someone adding in unsafe flavors or effect-enhancers. But overdosing nicotine easily leads to symptoms like short of breath, heart conditions, and the stuff takes days to leave your blood. A non-smoker is easily intoxicated even with only a few puffs of 20mg/ml liquid.
Last not least, the headline seems to aim at fear and FUD. The abstract makes it clear it are reasonable isolated cases involving THC usage, and is not related to a commercial product but to home-brew liquids. There is no study showing severe damage at 'normal' use. And while vaping may not be innocent, it's generally expected to be less worse than the alternative - igniting organic matter to extract the nicotine.
Re:It's guessing with so little info (Score:4, Insightful)
It is REALLY hard to fatally OD on vaped nicotine. Not that you can't OD, just that you will soon feel so sick you'll have no choice but to stop before you get to a fatal dose.
I would lean more towards an OD of random crap found in black market bathtub liquid THC, perhaps the cheap industrial solvent used to extract the THC from marijuana.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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The ones running golden to water clear are my favorites.
Of course, I get mine in a clean modern store where the product is tested, highly regulated and labeled. Oh, and costs less than the old street prices.
Legalization seems to of nearly wiped out the illegitimate products from the street. Here, the black market is basically dead, and incidents like this are very rare.
Legalization is the answer.
Hey Hairyfeet, the vapes never quite worked for me, but I did manage to quit smoking
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The best stuff is a honey blonde color, not dark brown.
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The most highly refined THC vapes are a very light honey, not dark brown.
The dark colored ones have a ton of impurities in them, which is why they're dark. And they're also probably extracted with nasty solvents like butane in hardware store setups that don't even use a vacuum pump to try to extract all the solvent.
There's a shitty convenience store about a mile from here that started selling butane in giant cans. Like I didn't know Ronson made light refills nearly the size of an Aladdin thermos. Either
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Funny right? :)
The "Informative" post gets it all wrong
Who'd have thought it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who'd have thought it? (Score:4, Insightful)
That inhaling a vaporised cocktail of chemicals into the lungs could have possible negative health consequences?
Well, scientists. Just because something is vaporised and has "chemicals" in it doesn't mean it's harmful. Should we suspect that it could have possible negative health consequence? Possibly, if there is anything other than anecdotal reports and expert opinion (expert opinion is not evidence). The air that we must breath to live is a cocktail of chemicals as well. Is it harmful? Yeah, maybe but we'd be dead without it. I just did a quick search on pubmed/medline and can't find *any* evidence to supporting these anecdotes. Perhaps someone should forumate a hypothesis and conduct a study. Oh, wait, that's what they're doing -- despite the alarmist news story.
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We should ban asthma inhalers. Now. Think of the children!
Or, I don't know, maybe have strict standards and regulations for their production, require clinical trials of new products and make it difficult for people to obtain the stronger ones without a valid prescription from a medical professional who will (in theory) weigh the potential negative effects and risks against the subject's medical needs? (...and let Darwin deal with people who buy Save $$$ on Asma Inhalators!!! on the Internet).
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Re:Who'd have thought it? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't be thick. For one thing, the mechanism behind vaping and metered dose inhalers is different. In the former, you are heating a liquid (usually propylene glycol [wikipedia.org] so that it vaporizes, carrying the dissolved active ingredient with it. Because you are heating a solutions of chemicals, you are bound to create some curious and unintended compounds that did not exist in the original "juice". For an MDI, you are releasing a fluid that has drug particles in suspension but, when released, the carrier fluid evaporates, leaving the drug particles as a cloud of dust. A physical reaction takes place, but not a chemical reaction.
A second key difference is quality. MDI's are a regulated medical product. This means that the purity of the drug, and the quality of its manufacture, is subject to a whole host of laws and regulations. The safety of the drug itself, and the method of delivery, has been demonstrated prior to being on the market. Furthermore, MDIs have been around for decades - plenty long for any risks associated with their use to be studied and understood. This is in stark contrast to e-cigs, which are relatively new. They are not regulated to the same quality levels as medical products. The manufacturers have not had to submit their ingredient list, clinical studies, or any other safety research to the FDA. The vaping liquid may come from some established brands...or could be some crap whipped up in someone's kitchen. Indeed, the industry has actively fought having to disclose its ingredient list, claiming that boutique mom-and-pop juice brewers will go out of business. Think of the mom-and-pop!
The third key difference is quantity. An inhaler may be used 1-4 times per day, delivering one or two puffs each time. A single canister typically represents a 30- or 90-day supply. Contrast that with vapers, who use their product many times a day, and go through a comparatively large volume of fluid, sometimes needing to replace the fluid cartridge every day. Will be see someday see medical record entries for "mL/day vaper" like we used to see "pack-a-day smoker"?
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No, we should legalize recreational asthma inhaler use.
1954 - You are here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, here you are: 1954, link proven. See you in another forty years or so before doing anything about it.
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That's not the claim, never has been. The claim is that it's a bit less dangerous. I would compare it to the difference between unsafe sex vs safe sex with a condom left in a hot car for a week or two. The degraded condom is still probably better than not having one, but of course to call it safe would be missing the point
But this isn't normal. This is sudden destructive results which were not generally present before. Something's up
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I simply don't believe them when they say it's safe. The industry has a long, long history of telling people that absolutely toxic things are completely safe.
Re: We are post 1954 (Score:2)
I simply don't believe them when they say it's safe.
It's already pointed out to you that nobody is saying that, so at this point all you're really saying is "I don't agree with this thing I made up!".
Re: We are post 1954 (Score:5, Informative)
Re: We are post 1954 (Score:2)
Read the history - "low", "light", "safer"....it's all there.
I have no clue what this hodgepodge of words is supposed to mean.
It all got banned later.
What all got banned later?
I'm watching a pure rerun of history at the moment.
I'm not sure what you're watching, but as long as you keep insisting that e-cigs are being marketed as safe you're clearly not seeing anything.
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"I have no clue what this hodgepodge of words is supposed to mean."
Those are obviously all words used in the deliberately deceptive marketing of cigarettes. If you want to be perceived as knowing what you are talking about, you're going to have to come up to speed on this topic.
There were/are "low tar" brands, and "light" varieties and brands, and these were described as being "safer" even though tobacco companies knew conclusively that they were not safer. "Light" cigarettes in particular are MORE hazardou
Re: We are post 1954 (Score:2)
I did. It has absolutely nothing to do with vaping. If he's trying to draw a link he needs to do better than throw out random words and rail against strawmen.
Re: We are post 1954 (Score:2)
"Safer" doesn't mean absolutely safe. (Score:2)
That used to be the point. Vaping is a safer alternative to smoking maybe and early signs point that way. Is even used to help quitting smoking.
"safer" than smoking does not mean that it has zero problems.
The article, however, only said "here's something being studied."
Interesting connection that my Local Media omitted (Score:5, Interesting)
These articles also like to cite massive increases among teens, but how many of those teens would be picking up cigarettes instead? Yes it would be best to not give into peer pressure and vape or smoke. But given the choice I'd much rather my kids vape than smoke. I can smell a smoker from several feet away even when they aren't smoking. It reeks and is far more dangerous, how many millions have died from lung and oral cancer from Tobacco, vs 150 suddenly and severely sick nationwide, and based on the findings of the CDC it's at least partially due to black/grey market THC juices.
The FDA and the E-cig industry need to look very closely at what chemicals are used in the juices, and set requirements as to what can and cannot be used in juices. Make the juicers safer, but stop the campaign to equate vaping with tobacco use.
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Except that marihuana went through many decades of research thus we know its effects very well. So we do the effects of nicotine. On the other hand, vaping started only in 2003 thus there was no chance to measure effect of decades-long use. Preliminary data sounds terrible, and that's plausible.
It's time to ban vaping NOW, and then maybe re-allow it in limited circumstances in 20 years or so, if the research results appear to be safe. There are no benefits of vaping, thus the reasonable choice when in d
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You realise if you ban it the nicotine addicts will just go back to cigarettes. At least vapors don't stink when they come back into the office after their every 30 min fix and sit next to you. I don't give a shit about their health but I do care about the effect their habit has on me.
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You realise if you ban it the nicotine addicts will just go back to cigarettes. At least vapors don't stink when they come back into the office after their every 30 min fix and sit next to you. I don't give a shit about their health but I do care about the effect their habit has on me.
They stink up everything. I've walked into an empty elevator and have it smell like a tobacco barn all because one single person on my floor smokes. God help you when she walks up to talk.
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Yes, the military grade halitosis a lot of smokers have because of their habit is something else. Quite nauseating.
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"Prohibition stopped no one from getting high."
Actually thats a myth. The more available a drug is the more people use it. Plenty more people would be on hard drugs if they weren't banned. Look at the rate of alcoholism in the arab states - almost nonexistent.
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"hey had an immediate small spike in consumption and then a declining trend to below prohibition era levels of all hard drugs"
Really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Reported lifetime use of "all illicit drugs" increased from 7.8% to 12%, lifetime use of cannabis increased from 7.6% to 11.7%, cocaine use more than doubled, from 0.9% to 1.9%, ecstasy nearly doubled from 0.7% to 1.3%, and heroin increased from 0.7% to 1.1%"
" is like assuming there's no gay people in those countries"
Moronic analogy. Someone i
Re:Interesting connection that my Local Media omit (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you for real? Has banning any substance ever really worked, or has it actually made the whole situation worse?
Up until the last 5 minutes, there was basically no acute health issues associated with vaping anything, nicotine or THC based. If it was always an acute risk, we almost surely would have heard of it by now.
If something used in the mass market has generally been proven free from acute harm in the last 10 years, why ban it? Because it might cause harm over some 20, 30 or longer year time horizon? If that's your standard, I hope you start regulating food products instead because that's the kind of time horizon where excessive sugar consumption will cause chronic long-term disease.
From every news report I've read, the "person sick from vaping" stories have been linked to black market THC vapes, although some of the news reports about the same incidents leave this fact out completely or only include it near the very end of the story (which is probably why edited versions dropped it).
THC extraction in the black market almost certainly uses a nasty solvent like butane, propane or some other high volitility and easy to obtain gas to extract it. I'm sure there's no effort made to clean the "equipment" (junk from the hardware store or worse) or much in the way of refining techniques -- like using an expensive vacuum pump to draw off the solvent gas, vs. just relying on its naturally low boiling point.
This makes it pretty clear than the impulse to ban stuff because it's "not safe" vs. regulating it to be "less dangerous" is the real problem. If marijuana was legal and THC vaporizers were regulated for purity, we probably wouldn't see this at all.
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Vaping is essentially propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and nicotine. All of these have known biological effects, and we know how the lungs process them when inhaled.
20 years later, the "research results" will be the same as the past hundred years of research on such chemicals (VG is actually ancient, and PG is an antifreeze that's been used in machines forever--it was discovered in the 1850s and commercially-available around 1930, and we experiment with the inhalation and injection of damned near ev
Why even mention MJ ? (Score:2)
Same for the other article (Score:2)
Difficult to gauge (Score:3, Insightful)
The cigarette industry hate vaping and spread mis information with large amounts of money.
However the claims are entirely plausible, I can't help but be skeptical on a topic with such big players involved.
Re:Difficult to gauge (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I'm always suspecting the tobacco industry to be behind most of the bull surrounding vaping. But in this case, I don't believe it's the case, because it turns out I had the same symptoms and I think I know where they come from.
I am (or used to be) a VERY heavy vaper, and I noticed shortness of breath, dull respiratory track pain - particularly in the morning - and stomach cramps. I tracked it down to my using very powerful mods with large atomizers (I'm talking 120+W mods with 30 mm drippers), and overuse of nicotine in these atomizers. In short, the clouds were so thick and so saturated in nicotine that I irritated my bronchi and stomach to the point of becoming worrying.
I cut back the nic and the power - I now use smaller 22mm drippers at 40-50W and everything cleared up within a week.
And yes, before anybody mentions it, I know it's better to do nothing than vaping. But if you have to do something, vaping is better than smoking. After 7 years of vaping, I could probably quit, and maybe it's time I did. But psychologically, I'm totally panicked at the idea of quitting vaping and picking up smoking again as a result...
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Isn't half the benefit of vaping, the ability to regulate your nicotine intake with a lot of granularity? You could just reduce by 5% or so, every 3 months, less and less - while it would obviously be difficult, surely easier than not smoking?
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Nicotine - at least not at the level I was using it when I overdid it - isn't really the problem. It's a stimulant like caffeine. The problem with cigarette smoke, or any burning products you stick in your lungs, is the by-products of combustion: tar, carbon monoxide, etc. So quitting nicotine isn't really any more urgent than quitting coffee, and I kinda like the taste of it.
But anyway, most of the time I vape plain glycerin. No flavors, and a little nicotine but not all of the time. I'm actually okay with
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The cigarette industry hate vaping and spread mis information with large amounts of money.
Whereas the booming E-cig/vaping fluid industry are in it for the good of humanity and the warm fuzzy feelings it gives them (well, that might be the THC... in the unlikely event that eat their own dogfood). We can be totally confident that they're not going to target kids (...because kids don't want to look grown up, so if you only ever show young adults vaping it won't encourage younger kids) or try to confuse "safer than smoking" with "safer than not doing drugs".
That's the trouble with vaping - as a w
You don't say (Score:2)
who would have thought that inhaling that stuff would be unhealty?
have you seen what comes out when some of these vapers exhale, i wouldn't want that in my lungs, ever.
I'll Smoke Anything! (Score:2)
https://www.theonion.com/ill-s... [theonion.com]
Classic Onion (1998).
My mom quit smoking and has been vaping for about 5 years and has a lot more energy (the COPD is still there and will not go away until she passes). She's down to 0% nicotine, but still she vapes, smoking something is a habit she's had for about 60 years so she continues it. Tough to shake something on that time scale.
Slashdot, what is up with the page resizing ads? Damn that's annoying when trying to type and watch what is being typed.
this is a supply chain problem (Score:2)
Spin it (Score:2)
Looks like the side effects of (Score:2)
Looks to be the same side effects of using Synthetic Cannibinoids.
https://www.talktofrank.com/dr... [talktofrank.com]
Do we even have editors for the front page? (Score:2)
Does this site even have quality control? Is slashdot totally co-opted by corporate interests and the FUD machine?
The headline is blatantly misleading, bordering on not even being related to the content of the article. Slashdot should be better than this.
Some THC vapor pens were tampered with or cut with unsavory chemicals. That's the story. So why the misleading headline, Slashdot? Why?
Who knew? (Score:2)
Who knew that voluntarily inhaling flavored smog could be bad for you? (Other than the actual WHO [who.int] -- no, not the band - (and other WHO publications) as far back as 2014.) And so quickly. At least with cigarettes, you usually have to wait 15-20 years to get lung cancer.
smoking (Score:2)
Filling your lungs with smoke is bad for them.
Who would have thought ?
cause is unknown but experts suspect (Score:2)
"What exactly is causing the acute illnesses is unknown, though health experts suspect vaping plays a role."
If we simplify this statement, taking out the meaningless parts, we get the following:
""
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Inhaling steam is most likely not the cause of anything. If was then Saunas should be the concern.
If a specific chemical is concerning, say that instead of apparently blaming nebulizers.
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And what's the argument for someone who has never touched a cigarette, but is now totally hooked on nicotine because of vaping? Surely there the argument should be that's it's stupid and risky compared to, say, not vaping?
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And what's the argument for someone who has never touched a cigarette, but is now totally hooked on nicotine because of vaping? Surely there the argument should be that's it's stupid and risky compared to, say, not vaping?
Yes, that is an entirely valid argument. It does have increased risks over neither smoking nor vaping. However, exactly no one in the industry itself is claiming that it's safe, just less dangerous that smoking traditional combustible tobacco.
Individuals might say that, because it's easy for individuals to believe or say untrue things in an attempt to justify their own choices and behavior.
The real problem, in my view, is that we as a society are refusing to enforce the laws and regulations that already ex
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I will readily grant that vaping is not as bad as cigarettes. My point, however, was: why does everyone conflate 'not as bad' with 'yeah, that's OK'. It's like somehow trying to justify beating your wife, because at least you aren't murdering her. Sure, it may not be as bad, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
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It's because people do things that are unhealthy, and we are creating alternatives.
I'm working on prohibiting lethal weapons carry by City police here. We have a weapon that operates exactly as a sidearm, but has a 40-meter range. It uses a .68-caliber round. When it hits you, it feels like inhaling burning glass shards. You go down. Nobody wants to be near you for a while. You don't die.
Despite what people think about trigger-happy cops, there's a risk that police will evaluate the risk of killin
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Since when do we as a species only do things that are good ideas?
Ever eat a potato chip?
Congratulations, you've participated in an unhealthy activity on the same spectrum as vaping.
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Trying to figure out if you're intentionally missing the point or not
Millions of kids, for good or ill, have been vaping for years. Suddenly we have clusters of kids with truly severe sudden onset damage. Something is going on with the vaping material these people are obtaining.
Is this a counterfeit product? Is it intentional? Is it some twisted moron on some kind of crusade? Paranoid, I know, but some people are insane enough to go such a route
Hands up anyone who cares (Score:2)
Addicts have been doing themselves damage for millenia. Let their doctors and families give a shit, no one else does. It is quite amusing though.
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Well, technically speaking, everything you ingest, inhale or otherwise allow your body to come into contact with is a chemical.
Funny enough, it was most likely the "natural herbs" that's the problem here.
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Well, technically speaking, everything you ingest, inhale or otherwise allow your body to come into contact with is a chemical.
Except, here in the real world where words don't necessarily mean what scientists would like them to mean, "chemicals" is widely used to refer to synthetic/artificially refined/concentrated substances that wouldn't occur naturally in the context. I know it sucks that everyday language is ambiguous and lacks scientific rigour, but pedantry is not a good response to people's genuine concerns.
Point is, anything in the wrong place, at the wrong time and/or in the wrong concentration can be dangerous. The old
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Failure to regularly apply chemicals to organs tends to damage them in pretty short order, too.
Water is a chemical. Vitamins are chemicals. Trace minerals are chemicals. Proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and sugars? All chemicals.
The fact that something is a "chemical" does not, in and of itself, render it harmful. Many chemicals have little to no effect on human bodies, and some are even beneficial. Indeed, humans will die without regularly ingesting certain chemicals.
Re: Ogligatory... (Score:2)
Inhaling smoke of any kind is likely never a good idea in the long run
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And yet vaping is not smoke, it is steam
This has been a long time coming, ever since the anti-tobacco industry realized that vaping was going to eliminate their tobacco sin-tax income by tens of billions of dollars over the next few years
So, instead of being happy that people were quitting smoking, they decided to smear and defame the one thing that can get a 'hooked' smoker to quit
This is beyond fucked up
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Vaping is a "steam" of potentially toxic compounds.
But the concerns go beyond nicotine alone.
Some brands contain chemicals including formaldehyde -- often used in building materials -- and another ingredient used in antifreeze that can cause cancer.
Flavors in e-cigs also raise red flags. Some use a buttery-tasting chemical called diacetyl, which is often added to foods like popcorn. When it's inhaled, it can be dangerous.
"Diacetyl is a well-known harmful chemical, which, among other things, causes a lung di
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So, instead of being happy that people were quitting smoking, they decided to smear and defame the one thing that can get a 'hooked' smoker to quit
Vaping was never about quitting smoking; that's a "smoke screen" to rationalize it.
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the flower being treated with pesticides before producing the oil. They're manufactured and released for retail in the legalized states
So legalization isn't doing so much to ensure the safety of the product.
but since the community is aware of the issue
Some may, but I suspect that many just walk into the local pot shop, assuming that adequate regulation is in place and being enforced. The retail outlets seem to come and go pretty rapidly. How much visibility does 'the community' have over the back end of the process? How many growers spring up, dump crap on the market and then disappear just ahead of the inspectors? There is far to much rationalization on the part of the users that th