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Vaping Illnesses Are Linked to Vitamin E Acetate, CDC Says

130 points by mhb 7y ago

hurrdurr2 7y ago
Turns out breathing in large quantities of oil droplets is really bad for your lungs... Now perhaps they can stop the hysteria and put in some effective regulatory control instead.
- pkaye 7y ago
  Why would there need to be regulatory control? People could just look at the package to see if it mentions vitamin E or not.
  - buttcoinslol 7y ago
    The package of the black market thc cartridge will list if it has Vitamin E Acetate? There isn't vitamin e acetate in nicotine e-liquid because vitamin e acetate is used as a cutting agent in black market thc carts, and not used in e-liquid at all. You can't regulate the black market, but you can make it smaller or eliminate it by legalizing marijuana.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - anamexis 7y ago
    Why would the package mention vitamin E if there was not regulatory control?
  - MereInterest 7y ago
    Regulations are what require labels to be accurate, and to have labels at all.
- velox_io 7y ago
  Do you really believe zero oil/ fats from food makes it down the trachea? Of course it does! Plus you breathe in all manor of pollutants. It's a little like radiation; natural radiation is everywhere and you cannot avoid it, it becomes a major problem when the body is exposed to more than the body can safely remove/ recover from.
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    > Do you really believe zero oil/ fats from food makes it down the trachea? Actually, yes, I do believe that. When someone says "Wow, you really inhaled that piece of pie" it's usually meant as hyperbole.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - AQuantized 7y ago
    I think "large quantities" is the key part.
    - velox_io 7y ago
      Yes, very much so.
  - dkraft 7y ago
    You really think that thick scum on the steering wheel, dash and windows is not harming the most sensitive transmissive cells in your body? LOL
- analog31 7y ago
  As I understand it, oil mists have always been considered to be an inhalation hazard. I remember warnings about this from at least 30 years ago. A lot of people may have presumed that the vaping fluids were mainly water soluble.
  - hurrdurr2 7y ago
    Yeah you're right. Problem is illegal vape carts added these kinds of oils to make the product thicker. The problem has always been illegal THC vape carts causing injuries and deaths and not their legal counterparts.
- stinos 7y ago
  Turns out breathing in large quantities of oil droplets is really bad for your lungs... Is that from the article? (have no access to the article, and none of the other links from another comment here say anything about this, it is all about the findings about Vit E acetate)
  - gpm 7y ago
    Open the article in firefox and click on the reader view button on the right side of the url to bypass the paywall.
    - stinos 7y ago
      Must admit, I feel like an idiot now for not having tried this :P
drawkbox 7y ago
The market was sabotaged plain and simple because the big fish are moving in. The result will be regulatory capture that make sure the small/medium companies that created the market hand it over to the bigs. Vaping oil is much different than vaping flower or dry. Vaping simply means non combusted smoke which since it is under 450 degrees it reduces and removes 20+ carcinogens. Noone thinks smoking is purely healthy, but comparing vaping to cigarettes it is a no brainer safer. Oils probably a little less safe than dry. Also, cigarette butts are next to plastics as the most environmental damage. e-cigs and vaping is mostly re-usable and there are no butts about it. A decade of vaping, no issues. Suddenly lots of bunk production where the problem isn't nicotine or THC it is people trying to stretch supply by putting in harmful filler (vitamin E oil). If you ask me that is blue ocean market sabotage. The big fish are moving in. I predict the market of vaping suddenly being "safe" when the bigs are in. It was safe before, until it was sabotaged for the misinformation/disinformation to create the outrage and distraction. It is almost too easy with our social tabloid outrage market now to manipulate to keep the big fish richer and richer, while people fall for the scam. Prohibitions and banning does not work, makes it more unsafe and obliterates harm reduction. Safe markets that are convenient and available beat black markets. But you shouldn't help the bigs squash the small/medium that are already testing within their states in their respective legal state limited markets. This happens at the beginning of all large new markets that are blue oceans, the shakeouts happen on the regular by the bigs. The legal market here shows how it can improve these areas and find issues quickly. This was a black market sabotage move that was quickly rooted out. It has been turned into another authoritarian prohibitionist banning movement using children again. Overreaction and banning ONLY helps the big fish or the black market, makes everything more unsafe and obliterates harm reduction. The big fish can weather this storm, the small/medium that were doing it right cannot and you just side with the big fish when you do this. Nearly all prohibitionists/authoritarian people end up doing that just like in this case. Vaping is already illegal by age, no need to harm adults that have Right to Body. We need a Right to Body amendment that could have a whole political party around it, it could change the world. It would remove all laws and illegality around owning your own body including: drugs, sex/sex working, choice, etc for adults and legal markets that are safer. Parents need to step up to stop kids from vaping under age. We don't need the whole country or government to be Big Daddy, that is what an authoritarian system has like China or Russia. Companies shouldn't be able to market them like cigarettes or alcohol, but taking from all because of a few ends up in tyranny, even if you think that small step is harmless, it is not. Otherwise they'll start banning video games, sodas, food, candy, coffee, etc etc. You have to understand human nature, anything banned increases in value due to black market, anything legal where clear information gets out, starts to help the issue and safer production. Just like in this case, the market was legal, the problem was found to be Vitamin E Acetate quickly. Think it isn't black market or big fish sabotage? Note the time when Altria bought in Dec 2018 and note when the outrage happened, 2019, see a timeline pattern? [1] Stay tuned, they need people temporarily being against this to win this market as well, keep up the outrage for nothing and they will win. "But think of the kids!!" Oldest trick in taking over markets disaster capitalist big fish book. Will you still be saying "think of the kids" when they ban reddit? How about video games, sodas, food, candy, coffee, etc etc? There are plenty of prohibitionists that want to ban all of that and have tried with cases like this many times. They even tried with reddit for FOSTA-SESTA bills after the Craigslist/Backpage classified section shut down because the bigs wanted that and it was one of those "think of the kids" moments that ended up being complete lies [2]. Prohibitions and banning never works on things people choose to do with their own bodies, it will only benefit the black market and the wealthy big fish as well as the cartels/mafias. Nearly all authoritarian prohibitionist people end up helping authoritarian and big fish in the market just like in this case. Altria will benefit the most, they can take the temporary setback and it is even some false opposition going on to help this. Juul was bought into recently (2018) and the outage started months after (2019) [1]. Altria also ousted the CEO from before, now they will be able to own more of it with reduced value. This was a simple disaster capitalist big fish play and prohibitionists fell for it. Prohibitionists are out here fighting for big fish killing off innovative small/medium companies that were doing it right. If you are in the outrage state, pro-prohibitionists and own it, you are letting the big fish take the market from the small/medium players that were doing it right, or the black market mafias/cartels. This had nothing to do with the legal market, the legal market is the only way forward with age limitations and safety testing/regulations that don't squash the small/medium at this stage. Just be aware, the bots and trolls are out pushing this. The President looks to be doing an Executive Order soon to limit vaping while easing up on cigarettes, just like all the Republican governors that did it. [3][4] Same play different day, big fish win, "think of the children" authoritarianism and big fish disaster capitalist raiding of the blue ocean that will be immense when marijuana is fully legalized and vaping is suddenly "safe" when the bigs run the show. This is America. People not thinking it is about market power and money are naive as hell. You think this is for health reasons? laughable. Same with all bans and prohibitions, makes it more unsafe and more lucrative for mafias/cartels because there is decreased supply and increased demand, price goes up, in comes the underground and more danger. [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/12/20/678915071/altria-buys-35-percent-stake-in-e-cigarette-maker-juul https://www.npr.org/2018/12/20/678915071/altria-buys-35-perc... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-feds/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-f... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/health/trump-vaping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/health/trump-vaping.html [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-08/senior-white-house-official-says-fda-shouldn-t-regulate-tobacco https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-08/senior-wh...
somehnguy 7y ago
Surprise, what everyone in the e-cig industry has been saying all along. Many states have already started implementing very restrictive electronic cigarette laws though (to save the children of course). A few small e-cig shops near me have been gutted due to the new overly restrictive regulations. Protecting big tobacco's interests? Mission accomplished.
gpm 7y ago
> Some patients say they vaped only nicotine, and state health officials consider some of those reports reliable, Dr. Schuchat said. A good warning to ignore all the people on HN who keep trying to insist that "oh, vaping is safe as long as you aren't doing X". We have no idea if vaping is safe. We still have no idea if vaping is safe, except we explicitly know it is unsafe (to the point of acutely poisoning you) if it involves this chemical.
- e40 7y ago
  Yeah, it's still early days in this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/health/juul-pods-contaminated.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/health/juul-pods-contamin...
- sneak 7y ago
  Vaping is orders of magnitude safer than smoking cigarettes. 9 total have died from vaping. 22,000 die every day from cigarette smoking.
  - gpm 7y ago
    9 have died from acute poisoning from vaping. No one dies from that from cigarettes. Vaping hasn't been around long enough for us to see any long term effects similar to the ones caused by cigarettes.
    - sneak 7y ago
      That’s a false statement. Vaping has been around for fifteen years or more, and common for at least ten.
      - gpm 7y ago
        Smoking has been around since at least the 1700s, it wasn't until something like 1950 that we managed to link it to lung cancer. 15 years is nothing... I'm not sure where to find numbers about the increase in lung cancer after smoking for only 15 years, but I know most studies look at people who have been smoking for more like 30 or 50 years...
dmix 7y ago
This would be a good time to check old HN and Reddit threads for all of the hysteria and “we told you” stuff being spread after this originally hit the news. I also noticed a bunch of health agencies took advantage of the headlines to stir up fear around using them, they never specified what types to watch out for. I was immediately suspicious that after a decade (or longer) of vaping being popular that all of a sudden people started dying out of nowhere. If it was caused by standard e-cigarettes it there would have been a gradual increase in cases. The early warning signs that it was strictly a small subset of shady black market THC cartridges also wasn’t a big surprise (they even look shady [1]). The vendor I’ve used in the past for (actual) THC cartridges posts lab tests for all of their vape products to show there was zero adulterants and they were doing it before the big scare. Now we see that it was 100% vitamin E all along (which was used as a thickening agents for the lowest-quality THC, something glycol-based nicotine liquids wouldn't need). [1] https://hempherbalshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5899D1BA-66BD-4032-A1D4-B26769792734.jpeg https://hempherbalshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5899D1...
- gpm 7y ago
  Would you please stop spouting this bullshit? > But Dr. Schuchat left open the possibility that other chemicals or toxins from vaping fluids or devices could also be causing the severe respiratory ailments. > Some patients say they vaped only nicotine, and state health officials consider some of those reports reliable, Dr. Schuchat said. > Because there is still uncertainty about what is causing the illness, the C.D.C. is continuing to urge people to avoid vaping anything, including e-cigarettes. Just because we have identified one thing that is almost definitely killing people doesn't mean we have identified the only thing. In fact we have good reason to think that we haven't identified the only thing.
  - dmix 7y ago
    So we shouldn't wait for actual evidence to worry is what you're saying? Just be perma-scared because "maybe". The number of deaths and hospital visits have largely stopped since Vitamin-E was identified, all data is pointing to one thing. This has always been about Vitamin-E being added as a thickening agent to low-quality THC cartridges which would be needless in any glycol based nicotine cartridges and 100% not needed for any real CO2 filtered THC cartridge that used proper marijuana sourcing. Done right it's as safe or unsafe as it's always been.
vfclists 7y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRN_LkCa_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRN_LkCa_o 1:26, 1:30, 1:32, 2:18, 2:25, 2:28 Is it ethical to target young people so blatantly in this manner? Does the fact that they are habit forming mean nothing to industry and advertisers? I guess the chickens are coming home to roost
- Esthrowaway123 7y ago
  Is it ethical to listen to Chris Brown after reading the police report of how he beat the shit out of his girlfriend?
  - ghemsley 7y ago
    Ethical? Depends what he is saying, and whether it's true/reasonable or not. I think you meant to ask whether it's still politically correct, and the answer would be 'probably not'.
velox_io 7y ago
This problem isn't down to vaping, it's black-market THC products that were the problem. The ingredients in vape products are very safe (similar formation to the ingredients in asthma inhalers, and many other places). Yes, a dozen or so people have died from this, but this is a fraction of the 500,000 people die per year from smoking-related deaths in the United States alone. You have to seriously question the motives behind the "Vaping Deaths!" headlines. Most things in excess are harmful; food, even water! It's all a question of context, and how safe something is compared to the alternatives. Instead of encouraging people to move from smoking to vaping, quite the opposite is happening, like trying to ban flavoured vaping products for instance. There's underage drinkers, but banning any type of flavoured alcohol product would sound ridiculous. I vape CBD as it is the most effective way to consume it to reduce muscle spasms. I have never smoked, I hate smoking, and that's before my dad died from lung cancer. So I have been following the story very closely, it's actually quite scary how low public health factors in the scheme of things. Big tobacco is still very big (and powerful).
- dkraft 7y ago
  I still struggle to comprehend why the vape cloud is expelled. If it contains the valuable component then why do vapers expell 99.9% of it?
- goldcd 7y ago
  I'd like to think of it as 'big tobacco' - but most of them own vape brands, so would have thought they'd be most happy to carry on selling nicotine products, without being beaten up with them killing people. Now - I don't think big tobacco is 'clean' here. EU's "Tobacco Products Directive" was pretty much written to hand the market to large suppliers selling small refills. My guess is that it's just the latest 'think of the children' scare. Juul and teenagers seem to be the main cause/victim here. Seems to gloss over the 'fewer teens are smoking' benefit here. We had novels, rock music, gansta rap, video-nasties, murder-simulator games... and now we have vaping. Eventually we'll get over it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
beefman 7y ago
Better sources (take your pick): https://www.sciencenews.org/article/vitamin-e-acetate-culprit-deadly-vaping-outbreak-cdc-says https://www.sciencenews.org/article/vitamin-e-acetate-culpri... https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/severe-lung-disease.html#what-is-new https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/s... https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6845e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6845e2.htm
- gpm 7y ago
  I can appreciate the value of linking to the CDC directly, but I'm curious about why you think the science news article is better than the nytimes one?
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
This reminds me of defective/poisoned alcohol in the prohibition era causing blindness and whatnot. If you're going to create a black market via regulation, you better be damn sure the cure isn't worse than the disease. In marijuana's case, that's definitely not true. The book Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser covers the unintended consequences of black markets in depth and I can't recommend it enough. But pretty much any Schlosser book is great.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  The denatured alcohol during prohibition was a government attempt to prevent people from drinking. This was manufacturers allegedly (the reason isn't clear) cutting THC with something that's safe for ingestion, but not inhalation. The motivations are completely different.
  - CoolGuySteve 7y ago
    If your assertion is that all tainted liquor during the prohibition era came from the government then you're going to have to provide a source, because that's simply bullshit. The safety risks of cheaply/poorly made moonshine are well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine#Safety
    - dehrmann 7y ago
      It's still different because that's shoddy manufacturing. Vitamin E is an additive, so it's more intentional.
      - drawkbox 7y ago
        If it is 'intentional' it still could be sabotage. A decade of no issues like this then suddenly a bunch at the same time the bigs are buying into vaping and the legal market for marijuana is growing. The blue ocean of vaping and marijuana is here, both the black market mafias/cartels and the big fish want it and to shakeout the small/medium suppliers you need an event like this. Not to mention the anti-smoking and cigarette lobbies in with the prohibitionists and presidential and governor executive orders, mere months after Altria buys into Juul (Dec 2018), very sketchy and suspect. Top it off it is a big target of propagandists and bot networks right now. Add all that up and it seems like a planned event after sabotage. The bigs and the mafias/cartels can weather the storm, the small startups and small/medium businesses that have made safe products for over a decade are the target of attack. In my opinion it was market sabotage on purpose. Every new blue ocean market has events like this and it is from various sources: big fish, underground mafias/cartels, prohibitionists, authoritarians, puritans and moral patrols. This is America. People not thinking it is about market power and money are naive as hell. You think this is for health reasons? laughable. From the country that can't even get healthcare to everyone? Same with all bans and prohibitions, makes it more unsafe and more lucrative for mafias/cartels because there is decreased supply and increased demand, price goes up, in comes the underground and big fish and more danger.
yborg 7y ago
When this story first came out several months ago, an HN commenter in the vape liquid business fingered this as a possible source of the problem. Can't find the comment now, but always impressed by the nuggets of real information that crop up on HN.
- _Marak_ 7y ago
  May have been me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20905712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20905712 , but I'm not in the vape liquid business.
  - raihansaputra 7y ago
    There was another comment, and the poster was talking about cutting the THC concentrate with Vitamin E oils which is dangerous to vaporize and inhale. I can't find it too though.
- arafsheikh 7y ago
  I believe it was this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20915873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20915873
dr_dshiv 7y ago
It costs $0.06 cents to manufacture a pack of cigarettes. Cigarette companies have a HUGE incentive to suppress vaping -- and I suspect they played no small role in the PR against vaping. While Altria bought Juul, it had no long term competitive advantage. Altria has no capacity to compete in a future where smoking is a technology. We were watching smoking get disrupted by a safer and better technology. That is a huge risk to big tobacco. Cigarettes will be tolerated by governments and the companies will make big profits from a small number of consumers, year after year.
colordrops 7y ago
Why is the media, continuously and erroneously tying tainted THC cartridges with flavored nicotine vapes targeting children? It's not just one time either. There's an interstitial on NPR which offers an informational website about the dangers of flavored nicotine to address the toxic cartridges. It's completely illogical, which makes me think that some sponsor is pushing an agenda.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  Tobacco companies want to kill vaping and replace it with heated tobacco. They're pushing this.
  - atlasunshrugged 7y ago
    I don't think that's fair to assume - PMI for sure is pushing heated tobacco and making major gains with it's IQOS product but Altria owns a massive stake in JUUL and most tobacco companies now have their own vaping products. My guess, but it's just a guess, is that tobacco companies just want new products like yesteryears "low tar" and "filtered" cigarettes that lure people into thinking something is healthier and either start or put off quitting
    - whamlastxmas 7y ago
      Tobacco companies own vaping products but they don't want to. They'd rather lose their entire vaping line and go back to tobacco because it's tremendously more profitable and they have much more control over that.
      - atlasunshrugged 7y ago
        Any articles or data on the statement about them not wanting to own vaping products? I recently read PMIs and BATs quarterly reports (and last years reports as well) and they're both talking up their novel products as a new source of growth as they're getting hammered on traditional tobacco. I mean I'm sure they'd like the world to just stop taxing/regulating cigarettes and everyone forget that it kills you and stay in that business forever but that just doesn't seem like a market reality
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
resfirestar 7y ago
As much as I support states refusing to wait for the feds to end our disastrous war on drugs policy, this is a reminder that unless we legalize and regulate marijuana at the federal level and make serious efforts to make the legal market work for everyone, there will continue to be a black market. That black market will continue to land people in jail (disproportionately black, Latino, and economically disadvantaged people), help to prop up drug traffickers, and even, as appears to have happened here, needlessly sicken and kill the consumers in an effort to meet demand for products popularized in legal markets. I worry that the marijuana business will be content with descheduling and stop pressing for action as soon as they can use the financial system, and our political system, through inertia, will leave everything else to an ineffective patchwork of state laws. Edit: Just on the subject of ongoing concerns over vaping and health, another critical thing legalization would allow is research. While this particular health crisis for now looks to be mostly or entirely caused by vitamin E oil, there is a lack of science on the long term effects of vaping weed in oil or flower form. There isn’t even that much research on smoking due to the prohibition, and the evidence we do have, which indicates that smoking weed has similar carcinogenic effects to tobacco, isn’t widely known.
- fjabre 7y ago
  Nicotine is specifically harmful to lung tissue. You state that smoking weed has carcinogenic effects similar to tobacco which very obviously is not the case. They are completely different drugs with completely different side effects. Smoke from marijuana does not equal smoke from tobacco. I am not saying its without negative consequences but they are apples and oranges. Of course we have research on smoked flower. 1000s of years of research. Mankind has been smoking this plant longer than recorded history and Ill take that any day over the literature at pubmed. I would love for the feds to allow more research of course but its still schedule 1 so not much to be done.
  - threwawasy1228 7y ago
    This kind of discussion really gets on my nerves. EVERY single type of smoke is carcinogenic. Period. There is a famous study of a sample of boy scout camp councilors/leaders who are non smokers having as much of an incidence of lung cancer as smokers. Why? Because they are constantly standing over campfires inhaling the smoke. There are similar studies about how bad incense is for your lungs. No smoke is safe for you to inhale.
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/1EoWq http://archive.is/1EoWq
notadoc 7y ago
Total media/moral panic about a virtual nonissue.
IXxXI 7y ago
What happened to previous reports claiming vaping cartridges were tainted with hydrogen cyanide? https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/tests-show-bootleg-marijuana-vapes-tainted-hydrogen-cyanide-n1059356 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/tests-show-bootleg-mar...

130 points by mhb 7y ago

Turns out breathing in large quantities of oil droplets is really bad for your lungs... Now perhaps they can stop the hysteria and put in some effective regulatory control instead.

pkaye 7y ago
Why would there need to be regulatory control? People could just look at the package to see if it mentions vitamin E or not.
- buttcoinslol 7y ago
  The package of the black market thc cartridge will list if it has Vitamin E Acetate? There isn't vitamin e acetate in nicotine e-liquid because vitamin e acetate is used as a cutting agent in black market thc carts, and not used in e-liquid at all. You can't regulate the black market, but you can make it smaller or eliminate it by legalizing marijuana.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- anamexis 7y ago
  Why would the package mention vitamin E if there was not regulatory control?
- MereInterest 7y ago
  Regulations are what require labels to be accurate, and to have labels at all.
velox_io 7y ago
Do you really believe zero oil/ fats from food makes it down the trachea? Of course it does! Plus you breathe in all manor of pollutants. It's a little like radiation; natural radiation is everywhere and you cannot avoid it, it becomes a major problem when the body is exposed to more than the body can safely remove/ recover from.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  > Do you really believe zero oil/ fats from food makes it down the trachea? Actually, yes, I do believe that. When someone says "Wow, you really inhaled that piece of pie" it's usually meant as hyperbole.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- AQuantized 7y ago
  I think "large quantities" is the key part.
  - velox_io 7y ago
    Yes, very much so.
- dkraft 7y ago
  You really think that thick scum on the steering wheel, dash and windows is not harming the most sensitive transmissive cells in your body? LOL
analog31 7y ago
As I understand it, oil mists have always been considered to be an inhalation hazard. I remember warnings about this from at least 30 years ago. A lot of people may have presumed that the vaping fluids were mainly water soluble.
- hurrdurr2 7y ago
  Yeah you're right. Problem is illegal vape carts added these kinds of oils to make the product thicker. The problem has always been illegal THC vape carts causing injuries and deaths and not their legal counterparts.
stinos 7y ago
Turns out breathing in large quantities of oil droplets is really bad for your lungs... Is that from the article? (have no access to the article, and none of the other links from another comment here say anything about this, it is all about the findings about Vit E acetate)
- gpm 7y ago
  Open the article in firefox and click on the reader view button on the right side of the url to bypass the paywall.
  - stinos 7y ago
    Must admit, I feel like an idiot now for not having tried this :P

drawkbox 7y ago

The market was sabotaged plain and simple because the big fish are moving in. The result will be regulatory capture that make sure the small/medium companies that created the market hand it over to the bigs. Vaping oil is much different than vaping flower or dry. Vaping simply means non combusted smoke which since it is under 450 degrees it reduces and removes 20+ carcinogens. Noone thinks smoking is purely healthy, but comparing vaping to cigarettes it is a no brainer safer. Oils probably a little less safe than dry. Also, cigarette butts are next to plastics as the most environmental damage. e-cigs and vaping is mostly re-usable and there are no butts about it. A decade of vaping, no issues. Suddenly lots of bunk production where the problem isn't nicotine or THC it is people trying to stretch supply by putting in harmful filler (vitamin E oil). If you ask me that is blue ocean market sabotage. The big fish are moving in. I predict the market of vaping suddenly being "safe" when the bigs are in. It was safe before, until it was sabotaged for the misinformation/disinformation to create the outrage and distraction. It is almost too easy with our social tabloid outrage market now to manipulate to keep the big fish richer and richer, while people fall for the scam. Prohibitions and banning does not work, makes it more unsafe and obliterates harm reduction. Safe markets that are convenient and available beat black markets. But you shouldn't help the bigs squash the small/medium that are already testing within their states in their respective legal state limited markets. This happens at the beginning of all large new markets that are blue oceans, the shakeouts happen on the regular by the bigs. The legal market here shows how it can improve these areas and find issues quickly. This was a black market sabotage move that was quickly rooted out. It has been turned into another authoritarian prohibitionist banning movement using children again. Overreaction and banning ONLY helps the big fish or the black market, makes everything more unsafe and obliterates harm reduction. The big fish can weather this storm, the small/medium that were doing it right cannot and you just side with the big fish when you do this. Nearly all prohibitionists/authoritarian people end up doing that just like in this case. Vaping is already illegal by age, no need to harm adults that have Right to Body. We need a Right to Body amendment that could have a whole political party around it, it could change the world. It would remove all laws and illegality around owning your own body including: drugs, sex/sex working, choice, etc for adults and legal markets that are safer. Parents need to step up to stop kids from vaping under age. We don't need the whole country or government to be Big Daddy, that is what an authoritarian system has like China or Russia. Companies shouldn't be able to market them like cigarettes or alcohol, but taking from all because of a few ends up in tyranny, even if you think that small step is harmless, it is not. Otherwise they'll start banning video games, sodas, food, candy, coffee, etc etc. You have to understand human nature, anything banned increases in value due to black market, anything legal where clear information gets out, starts to help the issue and safer production. Just like in this case, the market was legal, the problem was found to be Vitamin E Acetate quickly. Think it isn't black market or big fish sabotage? Note the time when Altria bought in Dec 2018 and note when the outrage happened, 2019, see a timeline pattern? [1] Stay tuned, they need people temporarily being against this to win this market as well, keep up the outrage for nothing and they will win. "But think of the kids!!" Oldest trick in taking over markets disaster capitalist big fish book. Will you still be saying "think of the kids" when they ban reddit? How about video games, sodas, food, candy, coffee, etc etc? There are plenty of prohibitionists that want to ban all of that and have tried with cases like this many times. They even tried with reddit for FOSTA-SESTA bills after the Craigslist/Backpage classified section shut down because the bigs wanted that and it was one of those "think of the kids" moments that ended up being complete lies [2]. Prohibitions and banning never works on things people choose to do with their own bodies, it will only benefit the black market and the wealthy big fish as well as the cartels/mafias. Nearly all authoritarian prohibitionist people end up helping authoritarian and big fish in the market just like in this case. Altria will benefit the most, they can take the temporary setback and it is even some false opposition going on to help this. Juul was bought into recently (2018) and the outage started months after (2019) [1]. Altria also ousted the CEO from before, now they will be able to own more of it with reduced value. This was a simple disaster capitalist big fish play and prohibitionists fell for it. Prohibitionists are out here fighting for big fish killing off innovative small/medium companies that were doing it right. If you are in the outrage state, pro-prohibitionists and own it, you are letting the big fish take the market from the small/medium players that were doing it right, or the black market mafias/cartels. This had nothing to do with the legal market, the legal market is the only way forward with age limitations and safety testing/regulations that don't squash the small/medium at this stage. Just be aware, the bots and trolls are out pushing this. The President looks to be doing an Executive Order soon to limit vaping while easing up on cigarettes, just like all the Republican governors that did it. [3][4] Same play different day, big fish win, "think of the children" authoritarianism and big fish disaster capitalist raiding of the blue ocean that will be immense when marijuana is fully legalized and vaping is suddenly "safe" when the bigs run the show. This is America. People not thinking it is about market power and money are naive as hell. You think this is for health reasons? laughable. Same with all bans and prohibitions, makes it more unsafe and more lucrative for mafias/cartels because there is decreased supply and increased demand, price goes up, in comes the underground and more danger. [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/12/20/678915071/altria-buys-35-percent-stake-in-e-cigarette-maker-juul https://www.npr.org/2018/12/20/678915071/altria-buys-35-perc... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-feds/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-f... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/health/trump-vaping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/health/trump-vaping.html [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-08/senior-white-house-official-says-fda-shouldn-t-regulate-tobacco https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-08/senior-wh...

somehnguy 7y ago

Surprise, what everyone in the e-cig industry has been saying all along. Many states have already started implementing very restrictive electronic cigarette laws though (to save the children of course). A few small e-cig shops near me have been gutted due to the new overly restrictive regulations. Protecting big tobacco's interests? Mission accomplished.

gpm 7y ago

> Some patients say they vaped only nicotine, and state health officials consider some of those reports reliable, Dr. Schuchat said. A good warning to ignore all the people on HN who keep trying to insist that "oh, vaping is safe as long as you aren't doing X". We have no idea if vaping is safe. We still have no idea if vaping is safe, except we explicitly know it is unsafe (to the point of acutely poisoning you) if it involves this chemical.

e40 7y ago
Yeah, it's still early days in this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/health/juul-pods-contaminated.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/health/juul-pods-contamin...
sneak 7y ago
Vaping is orders of magnitude safer than smoking cigarettes. 9 total have died from vaping. 22,000 die every day from cigarette smoking.
- gpm 7y ago
  9 have died from acute poisoning from vaping. No one dies from that from cigarettes. Vaping hasn't been around long enough for us to see any long term effects similar to the ones caused by cigarettes.
  - sneak 7y ago
    That’s a false statement. Vaping has been around for fifteen years or more, and common for at least ten.
    - gpm 7y ago
      Smoking has been around since at least the 1700s, it wasn't until something like 1950 that we managed to link it to lung cancer. 15 years is nothing... I'm not sure where to find numbers about the increase in lung cancer after smoking for only 15 years, but I know most studies look at people who have been smoking for more like 30 or 50 years...

dmix 7y ago

This would be a good time to check old HN and Reddit threads for all of the hysteria and “we told you” stuff being spread after this originally hit the news. I also noticed a bunch of health agencies took advantage of the headlines to stir up fear around using them, they never specified what types to watch out for. I was immediately suspicious that after a decade (or longer) of vaping being popular that all of a sudden people started dying out of nowhere. If it was caused by standard e-cigarettes it there would have been a gradual increase in cases. The early warning signs that it was strictly a small subset of shady black market THC cartridges also wasn’t a big surprise (they even look shady [1]). The vendor I’ve used in the past for (actual) THC cartridges posts lab tests for all of their vape products to show there was zero adulterants and they were doing it before the big scare. Now we see that it was 100% vitamin E all along (which was used as a thickening agents for the lowest-quality THC, something glycol-based nicotine liquids wouldn't need). [1] https://hempherbalshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5899D1BA-66BD-4032-A1D4-B26769792734.jpeg https://hempherbalshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5899D1...

gpm 7y ago
Would you please stop spouting this bullshit? > But Dr. Schuchat left open the possibility that other chemicals or toxins from vaping fluids or devices could also be causing the severe respiratory ailments. > Some patients say they vaped only nicotine, and state health officials consider some of those reports reliable, Dr. Schuchat said. > Because there is still uncertainty about what is causing the illness, the C.D.C. is continuing to urge people to avoid vaping anything, including e-cigarettes. Just because we have identified one thing that is almost definitely killing people doesn't mean we have identified the only thing. In fact we have good reason to think that we haven't identified the only thing.
- dmix 7y ago
  So we shouldn't wait for actual evidence to worry is what you're saying? Just be perma-scared because "maybe". The number of deaths and hospital visits have largely stopped since Vitamin-E was identified, all data is pointing to one thing. This has always been about Vitamin-E being added as a thickening agent to low-quality THC cartridges which would be needless in any glycol based nicotine cartridges and 100% not needed for any real CO2 filtered THC cartridge that used proper marijuana sourcing. Done right it's as safe or unsafe as it's always been.

vfclists 7y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRN_LkCa_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRN_LkCa_o 1:26, 1:30, 1:32, 2:18, 2:25, 2:28 Is it ethical to target young people so blatantly in this manner? Does the fact that they are habit forming mean nothing to industry and advertisers? I guess the chickens are coming home to roost

Esthrowaway123 7y ago
Is it ethical to listen to Chris Brown after reading the police report of how he beat the shit out of his girlfriend?
- ghemsley 7y ago
  Ethical? Depends what he is saying, and whether it's true/reasonable or not. I think you meant to ask whether it's still politically correct, and the answer would be 'probably not'.

velox_io 7y ago

This problem isn't down to vaping, it's black-market THC products that were the problem. The ingredients in vape products are very safe (similar formation to the ingredients in asthma inhalers, and many other places). Yes, a dozen or so people have died from this, but this is a fraction of the 500,000 people die per year from smoking-related deaths in the United States alone. You have to seriously question the motives behind the "Vaping Deaths!" headlines. Most things in excess are harmful; food, even water! It's all a question of context, and how safe something is compared to the alternatives. Instead of encouraging people to move from smoking to vaping, quite the opposite is happening, like trying to ban flavoured vaping products for instance. There's underage drinkers, but banning any type of flavoured alcohol product would sound ridiculous. I vape CBD as it is the most effective way to consume it to reduce muscle spasms. I have never smoked, I hate smoking, and that's before my dad died from lung cancer. So I have been following the story very closely, it's actually quite scary how low public health factors in the scheme of things. Big tobacco is still very big (and powerful).

dkraft 7y ago
I still struggle to comprehend why the vape cloud is expelled. If it contains the valuable component then why do vapers expell 99.9% of it?
goldcd 7y ago
I'd like to think of it as 'big tobacco' - but most of them own vape brands, so would have thought they'd be most happy to carry on selling nicotine products, without being beaten up with them killing people. Now - I don't think big tobacco is 'clean' here. EU's "Tobacco Products Directive" was pretty much written to hand the market to large suppliers selling small refills. My guess is that it's just the latest 'think of the children' scare. Juul and teenagers seem to be the main cause/victim here. Seems to gloss over the 'fewer teens are smoking' benefit here. We had novels, rock music, gansta rap, video-nasties, murder-simulator games... and now we have vaping. Eventually we'll get over it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

beefman 7y ago

Better sources (take your pick): https://www.sciencenews.org/article/vitamin-e-acetate-culprit-deadly-vaping-outbreak-cdc-says https://www.sciencenews.org/article/vitamin-e-acetate-culpri... https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/severe-lung-disease.html#what-is-new https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/s... https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6845e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6845e2.htm

gpm 7y ago
I can appreciate the value of linking to the CDC directly, but I'm curious about why you think the science news article is better than the nytimes one?

CoolGuySteve 7y ago

This reminds me of defective/poisoned alcohol in the prohibition era causing blindness and whatnot. If you're going to create a black market via regulation, you better be damn sure the cure isn't worse than the disease. In marijuana's case, that's definitely not true. The book Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser covers the unintended consequences of black markets in depth and I can't recommend it enough. But pretty much any Schlosser book is great.

dehrmann 7y ago
The denatured alcohol during prohibition was a government attempt to prevent people from drinking. This was manufacturers allegedly (the reason isn't clear) cutting THC with something that's safe for ingestion, but not inhalation. The motivations are completely different.
- CoolGuySteve 7y ago
  If your assertion is that all tainted liquor during the prohibition era came from the government then you're going to have to provide a source, because that's simply bullshit. The safety risks of cheaply/poorly made moonshine are well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine#Safety
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    It's still different because that's shoddy manufacturing. Vitamin E is an additive, so it's more intentional.
    - drawkbox 7y ago
      If it is 'intentional' it still could be sabotage. A decade of no issues like this then suddenly a bunch at the same time the bigs are buying into vaping and the legal market for marijuana is growing. The blue ocean of vaping and marijuana is here, both the black market mafias/cartels and the big fish want it and to shakeout the small/medium suppliers you need an event like this. Not to mention the anti-smoking and cigarette lobbies in with the prohibitionists and presidential and governor executive orders, mere months after Altria buys into Juul (Dec 2018), very sketchy and suspect. Top it off it is a big target of propagandists and bot networks right now. Add all that up and it seems like a planned event after sabotage. The bigs and the mafias/cartels can weather the storm, the small startups and small/medium businesses that have made safe products for over a decade are the target of attack. In my opinion it was market sabotage on purpose. Every new blue ocean market has events like this and it is from various sources: big fish, underground mafias/cartels, prohibitionists, authoritarians, puritans and moral patrols. This is America. People not thinking it is about market power and money are naive as hell. You think this is for health reasons? laughable. From the country that can't even get healthcare to everyone? Same with all bans and prohibitions, makes it more unsafe and more lucrative for mafias/cartels because there is decreased supply and increased demand, price goes up, in comes the underground and big fish and more danger.

yborg 7y ago

When this story first came out several months ago, an HN commenter in the vape liquid business fingered this as a possible source of the problem. Can't find the comment now, but always impressed by the nuggets of real information that crop up on HN.

_Marak_ 7y ago
May have been me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20905712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20905712 , but I'm not in the vape liquid business.
- raihansaputra 7y ago
  There was another comment, and the poster was talking about cutting the THC concentrate with Vitamin E oils which is dangerous to vaporize and inhale. I can't find it too though.
arafsheikh 7y ago
I believe it was this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20915873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20915873

dr_dshiv 7y ago

It costs $0.06 cents to manufacture a pack of cigarettes. Cigarette companies have a HUGE incentive to suppress vaping -- and I suspect they played no small role in the PR against vaping. While Altria bought Juul, it had no long term competitive advantage. Altria has no capacity to compete in a future where smoking is a technology. We were watching smoking get disrupted by a safer and better technology. That is a huge risk to big tobacco. Cigarettes will be tolerated by governments and the companies will make big profits from a small number of consumers, year after year.

colordrops 7y ago

Why is the media, continuously and erroneously tying tainted THC cartridges with flavored nicotine vapes targeting children? It's not just one time either. There's an interstitial on NPR which offers an informational website about the dangers of flavored nicotine to address the toxic cartridges. It's completely illogical, which makes me think that some sponsor is pushing an agenda.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
Tobacco companies want to kill vaping and replace it with heated tobacco. They're pushing this.
- atlasunshrugged 7y ago
  I don't think that's fair to assume - PMI for sure is pushing heated tobacco and making major gains with it's IQOS product but Altria owns a massive stake in JUUL and most tobacco companies now have their own vaping products. My guess, but it's just a guess, is that tobacco companies just want new products like yesteryears "low tar" and "filtered" cigarettes that lure people into thinking something is healthier and either start or put off quitting
  - whamlastxmas 7y ago
    Tobacco companies own vaping products but they don't want to. They'd rather lose their entire vaping line and go back to tobacco because it's tremendously more profitable and they have much more control over that.
    - atlasunshrugged 7y ago
      Any articles or data on the statement about them not wanting to own vaping products? I recently read PMIs and BATs quarterly reports (and last years reports as well) and they're both talking up their novel products as a new source of growth as they're getting hammered on traditional tobacco. I mean I'm sure they'd like the world to just stop taxing/regulating cigarettes and everyone forget that it kills you and stay in that business forever but that just doesn't seem like a market reality

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

resfirestar 7y ago

As much as I support states refusing to wait for the feds to end our disastrous war on drugs policy, this is a reminder that unless we legalize and regulate marijuana at the federal level and make serious efforts to make the legal market work for everyone, there will continue to be a black market. That black market will continue to land people in jail (disproportionately black, Latino, and economically disadvantaged people), help to prop up drug traffickers, and even, as appears to have happened here, needlessly sicken and kill the consumers in an effort to meet demand for products popularized in legal markets. I worry that the marijuana business will be content with descheduling and stop pressing for action as soon as they can use the financial system, and our political system, through inertia, will leave everything else to an ineffective patchwork of state laws. Edit: Just on the subject of ongoing concerns over vaping and health, another critical thing legalization would allow is research. While this particular health crisis for now looks to be mostly or entirely caused by vitamin E oil, there is a lack of science on the long term effects of vaping weed in oil or flower form. There isn’t even that much research on smoking due to the prohibition, and the evidence we do have, which indicates that smoking weed has similar carcinogenic effects to tobacco, isn’t widely known.

fjabre 7y ago
Nicotine is specifically harmful to lung tissue. You state that smoking weed has carcinogenic effects similar to tobacco which very obviously is not the case. They are completely different drugs with completely different side effects. Smoke from marijuana does not equal smoke from tobacco. I am not saying its without negative consequences but they are apples and oranges. Of course we have research on smoked flower. 1000s of years of research. Mankind has been smoking this plant longer than recorded history and Ill take that any day over the literature at pubmed. I would love for the feds to allow more research of course but its still schedule 1 so not much to be done.
- threwawasy1228 7y ago
  This kind of discussion really gets on my nerves. EVERY single type of smoke is carcinogenic. Period. There is a famous study of a sample of boy scout camp councilors/leaders who are non smokers having as much of an incidence of lung cancer as smokers. Why? Because they are constantly standing over campfires inhaling the smoke. There are similar studies about how bad incense is for your lungs. No smoke is safe for you to inhale.

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/1EoWq http://archive.is/1EoWq

notadoc 7y ago

Total media/moral panic about a virtual nonissue.

IXxXI 7y ago

What happened to previous reports claiming vaping cartridges were tainted with hydrogen cyanide? https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/tests-show-bootleg-marijuana-vapes-tainted-hydrogen-cyanide-n1059356 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/tests-show-bootleg-mar...