It reminds me a lot of the moral panic around Four Loco when I was in high school, albeit on a seemingly larger scale.

Kids simply don't smoke swisher sweets or chew Skoal in anyhing anywhere at all approaching the numbers that have been vaping. Presenting that as some equivalent behavior that will dramatically increase vastly misses the mark.

We don’t really know how many kids are using any nicotine products. Its an emotional argument more than a statistical argument.

“Think of the children” has been used to justify so many things from alcohol prohibition to prohibition of short selling stocks.

We do know, it's not an emotional argument, there are standardized surveys that capture this. Yes, kids may lie, but the surveys are the same each time, so the overall trend will be accurate, even if the specific number is under-represents the phenomenon. If only half the kids using tobacco products admit to it, but the trend is going up or down, it still accurately portrays and increasing or decreasing trend.

Thing is I haven’t read where someone can say whether it’s contamination or whether it’s the high heat vaporization or the combo or something else which is causing this. So given they don’t have strong evidence, it would be negligent not to pull a product.

> Thing is I haven’t read where someone can say whether it’s contamination or whether it’s the high heat vaporization or the combo or something else which is causing this.

You can start here, this WaPo article talks about the contaminant, Vitamin E Acetate aka alpha-Tocopherol acetate, an ester of Vitamin E and acetic acid.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/09/05/contaminant...

The PubChem article on this compound, first aid section recommends inhalation should be ceased ASAP. Also scroll down to the firefighting section, which recommends a respirator with an organic vapor/acid gas cartridge. This is because of the caustic nature of the compound when vaporized.

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/alpha-Tocopherol-a...

This article details finding from The Mayo Clinic that the lung tissue studies revealed chemical burns.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lung-damage-from-vaping-re...

Obviously not conclusive, but also not a completely bizarre supposition that inhaling a substance that breaks down into a mild acid when vaporized might cause chemical burns.

People have been vaping tobacco products for years, and people didn't particularly like it, because it's the evil nicotine, and it gives some people a small amount of pleasure, but there were never any of these health problems.

Stopping the sale of the legitimate product, that does go through testing and quality control, because there is counterfeit and black market product out there fucking people up, is not going to reduce the supply of the questionable off-brand product.

We've done this enough times now, we should know what is going to happen.

So due to lack of evidence proving a negative, and whole industry should shutdown until such evidence is found?

It’s kind of odd all of these sort of comments are being downvoted. They seem like legitimate observations but they’re downvoted wholesale.

Yeah, I'm actually kind of shocked that even the hacker news community is so susceptible to this kind of moral panic.