The FDA really wants flavored nicotine vapes banned, like flavored tobacco was banned ten years ago. I think the tainted THC vapes are being used as a convenient excuse to do so.
The amount of regulation of these devices is insane. At their core they have 3 parts; a battery, a heating element, and the juice/carrier. There are a lot of things that could potentially be consumed using these simple devices; nicotine and THC are just the first most popular ones. The fact that the FDA has the authority to regulate tobacco products should never have extended to anything but actual tobacco.
A ban would be devastating for those using ecigs to quit nicotine. I love the fruity flavors, and purposely started with those when I switched to ecigs. I figured that would help me get rid of the desire for tobacco flavor, and it worked so well that just the smell regular cigarettes would make me nauseous. It was a huge factor in my quitting successfully.
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.
So: there's an unknown number of contaminated liquid vape cartridges, all of which so far were THC? And since the substance is illegal it's going to be impossible to do a recall. This is a major health risk, and I wouldn't vape liquid THC for the near future.
Banning electronic nicotine devices right now, because of their link to contaminated THC vaping illnesses, is like banning vaccines delivered by hypodermic needles because needles are linked to Hepatitis infections by IV drug users.
The big tobacco companies sell plenty of vaping products. Vaping is something lots of kids will start - kids who would never start actual smoking. Why would they want vaping to be outlawed when they're making money from it?
You are approaching this from the wrong viewpoint. There are two customers for vape. You and me, who vape instead of smoking. There are also people who vape but would not instead smoke. That second one is a huge market.
I also see nothing requiring regulation or sin taxes for vaping. This is just plain wrong, and idiots started vape paranoia, flat lies in TV commercials, and misinformation campaigns. Yes, being addicted to anything is bad. Nicotine is not nearly bad enough - a burger is worse, alcohol is worse, living in a high-traffic area is worse.
People have no problem stuffing their face with ribs and cake. What we need is to take away rights from the government to forcefully be your nanny. On a side-note - it's complete BS that I can't vape mild ginseng flavor at my desk, but the Indian guy next to me can fill the whole freaking room with curry goat smell for hours after eating lunch at his desk, and the fat white guy can fill the room with the smell of shit an hour after eating a greasy burrito. I mean - really? Ginseng extract and glycerine are outlawed indoors, but tiny molecules of someone's shit are fine?
While I'm both an avid user of e-cigarettes and I'm not eager to use them for harm minimization, their banning would be deeply concerning to me. It has not been demonstrated that they are a health risk, and it is vanishingly unlikely their health profile is anywhere near that of combusted tobacco, so banning it would amount to a dogmatic fear of nicotine.
Which again, might not be so terrible given how little is understood about the drug. It can certainly be life-destroying if you smoke to get it.
Unless you live in SF, which just banned flavored vape juice. SF -- a place where you can buy pure THC crystal, but banana flavored nicotine is banned.
i think they should just ban the nicotine, not the vaping.
as a person with a nicotine addiction, i can tell you it's a hard one to crack. as a person who has smoked, i can tell you vaping is hardly a substitute.
that being said, i know some friends who have gotten way worse nicotine cravings as a result of vaping more or using stronger liquid than what they'd have in their regular cigs.
something worth noting, in countries outside the US, you can get approximate dosage labels on your cigs.
something else worth noting, my own nicotine dependency seems to have been made way way worse by using hooka, instead of cigarettes. surely, this is n=1.
edit to add: i don't actually think they should be banning any of this shit... but if you want to prevent people from getting hooked on a substance that can later be further used to manipulate behavior (e.g. by adding other things to it) then you should ban the nicotine.
in the end, i think they're wanting to ban vaping because they want to prevent people from smoking thc.
"folks using e-cigarettes are still inhaling dangerous chemicals."
They might be, or might not. It never fails to amaze me that a pill is hyper regulated, food is somewhat regulated, and at least where I live vape juice is completely unregulated for a couple more years. Whats in there, THC, benzene, used engine oil, who knows.
Obviously its trivial to make a substance that when vaporized is harmless; consider pure distilled filtered water. Its a hair trickier to supply nicotine with the vapor. But when they go all ochem crazy with flavors and smells, who knows whats in there and how long the users will live.
The FDA is moving extremely slowly on regulating vape juice. In a couple years it'll at least be licensed and documented. Until recently it was complete wild west.
I've never seen the FDA move on anything so slowly. There must be a lot of political money involved.
Reading between the lines of the various pieces on vaping I've seen, there seem to be two common assumptions at work: 1. vaping is like cigarettes, therefore must be unhealthy or 2. this is a new substance being ingested and therefore must be unhealthy.
I'm entirely supportive of people who want to study this stuff, but the impulse that any new product should be illegal until it's been proven safe to fairly arbitrary standards seems unreasonable to me. And I think there's a bit of a baptist-bootlegger coalition between the medical researchers and tobacco companies.
I'm bothered by the fact that most if not all news websites don't differentiate between nicotine and THC vapes. They're completely different. Illicit THC vapes are what's killing people.
Meanwhile, The stock prospects for the traditional big tobacco companies are going up.
Guess what it does to their value after getting an entire generation hooked on vaping nicotine for a decade, then for a brief time remove all flavors but the ones you can find in traditional cigarettes, then once people switch to tobacco and menthol only, remove e-cigarettes entirely. The only option is traditional cigarettes or not smoking at that point.
If it was easy to quit, we would’ve never had a need to create e-cigarettes to begin with.
The recent FDA judgement is that basically vaping should be regulated identically to cigarettes.[1] You might think that's pretty reasonable. It would be, except that for this part (which also applies to cigarettes):
> Today’s rule also requires manufacturers of all newly-regulated products, to show that the products meet the applicable public health standard set forth in the law and receive marketing authorization from the FDA, unless the product was on the market as of Feb. 15, 2007
So cigarette products made before 2007 (which is most of them, but predates most vaping) are grandfathered in and can be sold without expensive review. (As can "substantially equivalent" products.) But any vape product is required to go through the "new tobacco product application" process.[2] That process is (apparently) very expensive and can result in rejection anyways.
Anyway, we all know cigarettes are bad. We don't have real data on how good or bad individual vaping products are. I think that in all likelihood, at least some of them will be less harmful than smoking. The FDA has taken the stance that all vape products should be banned until they go through the premarket research.
You can understand why vape businesses are upset.
(I'm not affiliated with any of these businesses and don't use any of their products, just follow it all with mild interest.)
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