How about also asking another question: do some people using cannabis "dank" vapes lie?
Police, perception, insurance: three good reasons cannabis smokers wouldn't give the truth and might just say they smoked nicotine.
From the article "One trend worth noting, however, is that very few of the cases involve only nicotine products; most of the afflicted users reported using THC exclusively or as well as nicotine."
I struggle to see why GP is completely ignoring this and is insinuating that normal nicotine vaping is dangerous. It is fabulously unlikely we have only just "discovered" this.
Instead, something has changed, and that has been detected.
I worry because there seems to be a very strong media campaign of "don't vape nicotine", when the facts I have read say "don't vape THC carts". I imagine that there is an argument that it is safer to be over-cautious, but it also discourages smokers from converting to vaping. Vaping is not healthy, but it seems to be far healthier than smoking. I have very clearly seen the health positives of vaping within my own social circle. Maybe there is no disinformation campaign, but something seems majorly weird about this topic.
Disclaimer: never smoked nor vaped.
Is important to add to the discussions. A lot of articles are pointing the finger at THC carts. They may be the catalyst but according to this NEJM article[0]:
>About 80% of the persons who vaped and became ill reported having used both nicotine products and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or cannabidiol (CBD) products.
That's for 215 acute cases and 2 deaths that they cited.
Are you sure? The article states ... "...most of the afflicted users reported using THC exclusively or as well as nicotine."
From the TechCrunch article:
> One trend worth noting, however, is that very few of the cases involve only nicotine products
You'd have to read these articles very carefully to discern that.
> ...most of the afflicted users reported using THC exclusively or as well as nicotine.
Ditto.
If this is such a serious public health risk (as it seems to be, with more than one death involved so far), why the weasely language, why is this being communicated exclusively through the use of ambiguous terms like "some", "most", "associated with", etc?
> While many of the patients, but not all, reported recent use of THC-containing products, some reported using both THC- and nicotine-containing products. A smaller group reported using nicotine only.
"A smaller group reported using nicotine only" - how much smaller? Technically speaking, two people is a group, and is smaller than say 400.
Every official news release I've read on this (with the exception of one or more from particular state-level medical organizations) is written in this manner, a maximization of uncertainty and confusion, but with every single sentence being technically correct if taken literally as written. This is plausible deniability done right.
Why don't they simply publish a concise table of data that unambiguously states the actual numbers that they have in their possession (otherwise, how would they make these statements), but instead choose to take the far more laborious approach of describing that data, and in unclear and extremely ambiguous terms?
Neither of these prevents them from publishing the dataset that they do have.
> When researchers publish datasets it’s to back up conclusions that they’ve made based on the data, and in this case they haven’t reached conclusions.
Correct, but they are broadcasting a high level of danger "associated with" vaping, and rather than transparently and fully disclosing the data that as-close-as-possible reflects the specific area of the danger, they are instead using ambiguous text to describe the data in a way that makes it highly uncertain where the actual danger lies, while "hinting" (but explicitly saying) that the danger lies in ecigs in general, not THC vapes in particular. Nothing about the data is forcing them to do this, they are choosing to do this. I am curious why.
> Implying otherwise to the public would be irresponsible.
Implying something, while hiding what actual facts (data) they have in their possession is precisely what they are doing now. And yes, it is irresponsible.
I can think of a several entities who would rather the actual data ("facts", to the best of our knowledge) is kept secret and have this (unnecessarily) vague story of danger drag out as long as possible in the media and public dialogue. However, I can think of no valid reason that the data needs to be kept secret - can you?
> most of the afflicted users reported using THC exclusively or as well as nicotine
"Some" being (in a loose sense) the complement of "most", I see no contradiction.
(VG makes the larger "clouds" that some people prefer, typically with lower nicotine concentrations. PG is much less visible and dissipates quicker, but some people consider it a little more harsh, regardless of nicotine concentration)
Earlier reports were suggesting that contaminated oils may be part of the cause, which could explain why all these cases are hitting at once. Not sure on the process of making these oils, but I could see new methods being introduced causing unforeseen side affects.
Vaping is new.
Maybe these are the early incidents of a yet-to-be-discovered chronic condition that takes a decade plus of vaping to develop.
Hey, millions of high schoolers smoke cigarettes and none of them have lung cancer! (yet)
Juul Lab's and all the vaping shops need to be put out of business for claiming this is a harmless way of smoking. Kids took that and ran with it as they vaporize God knows what to get high in a stealthy and supposedly, more healthy way.
According to the article, 5 people have died due to this vaping related illness. By contrast, cigarette smoking kills 480,000 people a year in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
AFAIK, the data is consistent with vaping being more dangerous than smoking.
For what it’s worth, humans evolved in the presence of fire. Plant smoke, while quite dangerous, is something that mammal lungs have dealt with, in moderation, forever. Whatever chemical soup is present in vaping vapor is new. And saying “it’s just glycerol” makes no sense. Glycerol has very small vapor pressure at body temperature and boils well above the boiling point of water. Some websites suggest that the actual output from vaping is quite nasty indeed.
Oh no, not commas! What other punctuation related illnesses hover over our head, waiting to descend when the clouds of vape smoke clear?
Or, even worse, colon cancer. (A terrible affliction that can leave one with a semi-colon.)
(I'll get downvoted... like you... we will go down together.)
But in the second paragraph, you say that Juul -- a legal company that produces NICOTINE cartridges, not THC -- should be shut down.
How does A lead to B here?
We don't know that, or not with the interpretation I think you're making. I mean, the correlation here between vaping and lipoid pneumonia is objectively much stronger than it is between smoking and lung cancer after a similar amount of use.
I guess most epidemiologists would go with you and bet that this is "probably" not as bad, long term. But given the evidence at hand that's still a pretty significant risk.
Nicotine from ingested smokee/vape/tobacco, or from other natural human physiology?
(1) The condition is called lipoid pneumonia, which comes from inhaling organic fats and oils.
(2) The CDC reports and early studies indicate that the condition has appeared in some people who only vaped with nicotine in glycerol (which is also sometimes called glycerin or glycerine).
(3) Glycerol (the Christmas molecule--HO HO HO) is a type of alcohol called a polyol, meaning that it has multiple (in this case, three) hydroxyl groups on a carbon chain.
(4) Glycerol is not a fat and cannot be responsible, on its own, for lipoid pneumonia.
(5) However, glycerol is the precursor to fat synthesis in the body: triglycerides, for example, are fats metabolized from glycerol.
(6) The reaction of glycerol -> triglycerides in the body is catalyzed by nicotine-containing enzymes mostly present in the liver, but expressed to a lesser extent in every cell.
(7) The reaction of carboxylic acid (derived from CO2) with glycerol creates fatty acid esters through the process of acid-catalyzed esterification.
(8) The key unanswered question is where does the fat that is found in the macrophages (a type of white blood cell whose function is to engulf and digest foreign substances) that is the sine qua non of lipoid pneumonia come from.
(9) Many vapers are formerly heavy smokers, meaning that they have some degree of chronic lung disease, that they retain CO2, and are very likely to have respiratory acidosis.
(10) Elevated CO2 also occurs in many other circumstances, such as opioid use and sleeping in poorly ventilated conditions.
(11) If the early reports are correct that lipoid pneumonia is occurring in vapers who have only used nicotine in glycerol with no flavoring or impurities, then we must ask the question: Is glycerol being converted to fatty acids in lung cells by NAD-mediated enzymatic conversion or acid-catalyzed esterification in the presence of high CO2 levels and acidity?