Ironies of Vaping Health Crisis
By Albert B. Kelly
As I write this, the statistics on vaping are getting ugly.
New Jersey has 20 confirmed cases of vaping-related illness and 1 death and officials
are investigating several dozen suspected cases. The sick range from kids in middle
school to adults in middle age. Of both the confirmed and suspected cases, the
number of males (50) is more than double the females (20). Statistics aside, the
situation is fuzzy and these numbers may only be scratching the surface of the
problem.
If there is one thing that has been a little startling, it’s
the apparent speed with which these illnesses seem to have sprung up from coast
to coast. I say that because e-cigarettes and vaping have been around for a few
years while the emergence of these illnesses appears to be relatively recent
and quick. This may just be a perception on my part or these illnesses may in
fact be a relatively recent thing but either way, things are serious.
If you’re not familiar with e-cigarettes, they are small electronic
devices that create an aerosol by heating liquids in “pods” or canisters. These
e-cigarettes or vaping devices generally contain nicotine along with various
other chemicals that are all part of making the aerosol and once heated (i.e.
vaporized), a user inhales the aerosol in the same way a smoker might inhale a
regular cigarette. In addition to nicotine, these devices can also be used with
THC (the chemical responsible for marijuana's “high”), via cannabis-infused
oils.
When vaping or e-cigarettes first came on the scene, they
were touted by manufacturers as a way to help people quit smoking by serving as
an alternative to regular cigarettes. The idea was that people could control the
amount of nicotine they were ingesting while at the same time avoiding the array
of other substances in regular cigarettes responsible for various diseases, especially
cancer. Over time, vaping became a thing- so much so that we now have flavors
such as cherry, cinnamon, and citrus in much the same way that coffee comes in hazelnut
or French vanilla.
As for being a “step-down” alternative to regular smokes, maybe
it has worked for some, but maybe not. We simply don’t know enough from a
medical standpoint and until we do, we need to hit the brakes. That’s why
Governor Murphy’s Executive Order 84 empaneling an emergency task force was a
good first step as it led to a report with several possible next steps.
Some of the measures suggested by the task force include a
ban of flavored vaping products, increasing penalties on unauthorized sales to
people under 21 years of age with stepped up enforcement, restricting online
sales with limited exceptions, prohibiting advertising and sale of products
intended to conceal or disguise vaping devices and/or prohibiting sales to
those under 21, beefing up point-of-sale practices such as securing vaping
devices and disseminating information to consumers, and regulating and/or
limiting the retailers who can sell vaping devices and products. These are good
first steps.
We can debate free markets and economic impacts all we like,
but profit motive and human nature being what they are, in the absence of
regulation, we’ll continue to have companies looking for the quickest and
cheapest ways to make money off of vaping and to heck with the health
consequences. What we won’t have are companies putting in the time and expense necessary
to test the substances they use to find out what happens when they’re heated
and inhaled into our lungs.
And just to be clear, we do have a crisis on our hands
because our lungs were never meant to be coated with oils and flavors and
goodness-knows- what- else these companies end up aerosolizing for us to
inhale. No matter what we think of vaping, the ironies here are thick.
For one thing, according to the New Jersey Tobacco Survey,
cigarette use among high school age males dropped from 10.3 percent in 2012
down to 3.5 percent in 2018. That’s real progress. Yet we now find ourselves
facing a fast-moving and ill-defined health crisis from e-cigarettes and vaping
so we’ve basically gone backwards.
But perhaps the greatest irony is that companies such as Juul
and all the Juul wannabes out there get to roll the dice with people’s health
in the name of vaping or capitalism, yet we require drug companies to spend years
and many millions of dollars getting FDA approval for asthma inhalers. Go
figure.