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Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

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Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#31
post #2

This seemed pretty obvious when all the stories were about cannabis vaping, not nicotine. And now vaping is thought to be unhealthier than tobacco smoking.

The stories were never about cannabis vaping either. They were about adulterated cannabis extract vaping. Someone using a cannabis flower vaporizer (e.g. PAX 2/3, Firefly, Arizer, Volcano) with pure lab tested flower was never at risk for the lung disease that vitamin E acetate has caused. The linked article doesn't mention vitamin E acetate, so here's one that discusses it: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/20/210317…

> pure lab tested flower

There has been some trouble with that too. Washington state doesn't require lab testing for pesticides, and in other states there have been cases of fraudulent testing (https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/industry-insiders-warn... https://www.leafly.com/news/industry/sequoia-analytics-surre... )

The industry is still maturing and I'm confident things will get better with time. But for the time being, consumers should exercise reasonable caution.

Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#32

Given the highly localised and sudden/synchronised bout of illness associated with vaping, to me it immediately seemed reasonable to assume contamination of a specific batch of products rather than the act of vaping in general being an issue. I'm not saying vaping doesn't perhaps have long term negative effects, just that the pattern of illness suggested an issue with specific products.

it wasn't a contaminated batch. we know what caused it. it was a particular formulation of vape juice used by multiple suppliers.

Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#33
post #2

This seemed pretty obvious when all the stories were about cannabis vaping, not nicotine. And now vaping is thought to be unhealthier than tobacco smoking.

Except Montana, and afaik other places, banned forms of nicotine vaping in response to this. Also the general public seems to think it's related to nicotine, not thc.

San Francisco, too?

Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#34

The big problem seems to be that vaping has never been proven to be safe or safer than cigarettes. There's always been the assumption that it is. My suspicion is that something like this outbreak will happen again. I'm not a fan of the vaping companies since their goal seems to be to get users addicted to their product but they should go through the process of proving that vaping is safer than cigarettes so they don'…

Burning carbon chains and directly afterwards ingesting it into the lungs has been proven to be quite bad, it does cell and tissue damage and hinders a healthy cell respiration. Is there any reason we should expect worse effects from vaping which, as I understand it, if done correctly doesn't produce harmful carbons?

[deleted]

Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#35

Given the highly localised and sudden/synchronised bout of illness associated with vaping, to me it immediately seemed reasonable to assume contamination of a specific batch of products rather than the act of vaping in general being an issue. I'm not saying vaping doesn't perhaps have long term negative effects, just that the pattern of illness suggested an issue with specific products.

it wasn't a contaminated batch. we know what caused it. it was a particular formulation of vape juice used by multiple suppliers.

That's what I meant. Specific products were using a harmful substance, rather than the act of vaping causing illness.

Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#36
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of "the great hack". Disinformation is so disturbing.

If you wanna go another layer on “the great hack” the fun bit is Brittney Kaiser is full of crap. She ran election interference for the last Mexican presidential election. That just finally leaked this week in The Guardian If she was actually remorseful for her roll in Cambridge Analytica, she would’ve admitted that from the start, instead of doing this whole reputation PR/ The Great Hack thing to make herself still…

Yes, I think we should have another category for "whistleblowers" who only appear after somebody else has already blown the whistle

Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#37

The big problem seems to be that vaping has never been proven to be safe or safer than cigarettes. There's always been the assumption that it is. My suspicion is that something like this outbreak will happen again. I'm not a fan of the vaping companies since their goal seems to be to get users addicted to their product but they should go through the process of proving that vaping is safer than cigarettes so they don'…

That assumption is there because in the US, things are generally assumed to be safe until proven it isn't. I don't see people asking if the cups they buy are safe to drink from (e.g. many BPA free cups are worse than BPA cups but no one seems to care), or the food they eat. They don't ask for proof their humidifier is safe.

The reason why people are concerned is because vaping is a smoking replacement and people hate smoking in all its forms, safe or not. It's a political thing.

Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#38
post #2

This seemed pretty obvious when all the stories were about cannabis vaping, not nicotine. And now vaping is thought to be unhealthier than tobacco smoking.

Except Montana, and afaik other places, banned forms of nicotine vaping in response to this. Also the general public seems to think it's related to nicotine, not thc.

Considering how the majority of the news releases and articles were written, it is not surprising that fear of vaping itself is the idea that remains in people's minds.

Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#39
post #30
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cigarettes kill almost 500,000 people a year in the US alone. We could have 10 of these "outbreaks" a day and still be way ahead.

That assumes there’s no long term cancer risk from vaping, which we simply don’t know yet.

Is there any plausible theoretical basis for a cancer risk from vaping?

Re: Vaping-related lung injuries primarily linked to black-market products

#40
post #2

This seemed pretty obvious when all the stories were about cannabis vaping, not nicotine. And now vaping is thought to be unhealthier than tobacco smoking.

The stories were never about cannabis vaping either. They were about adulterated cannabis extract vaping. Someone using a cannabis flower vaporizer (e.g. PAX 2/3, Firefly, Arizer, Volcano) with pure lab tested flower was never at risk for the lung disease that vitamin E acetate has caused. The linked article doesn't mention vitamin E acetate, so here's one that discusses it: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/20/210317…

It’s irritating that Apple pulled the Pax app from the App Store because it was related to “vaping”.
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