Vaping: A Killer on The Loose

Twenty-three and counting: That’s how many people — mostly young people — who have died recently as supposed-victims of vaping. That practice, the inhaling fumes of smoldering nicotine and an unknown cocktail of chemicals, is a relatively new phenomenon, though the concept of vaping dates back thousands of years.

In its modern incarnation — the first e-cigarettes were introduced into the United States in 2007 — it’s already resulted in at least 1,080 illnesses, The New York Times reported on October 8.

And within the past few weeks, the growing number of health ‘issues’ has caused an increasing number of retailers to stop stocking or selling vaping-related products. Among the latest to join that list are Kroger, Walmart, Walgreens, and Rite-Aid.

As or more significant is the fact that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), which (loosely) regulates e-cigarettes and vaping devices, has ordered the six principal players in the vaping-products industry — including market-leading Juul as well as RJ Reynolds, a long-time leader in the traditional cigarette field — to turn over records related to their marketing, business practices, and financial performance.

Advisories from the CDC — the Centers for Disease Control — have added several important perspectives to what they term, very conservatively, “a multi-state outbreak of lung injury associated with the use of e-cigarettes, or vaping products”:

• Most patients report a history of using THC-containing products. The latest national and regional findings suggest products containing THC play a role in the outbreak.
• Approximately 70% of patients are male.
• Approximately 80% of patients are under 35 years old.
• 16% of patients are under 18 years old
• 21% of patients are 18 to 20 years old

One of the original intents (aside from making massive amounts of money) of the modern-day promoters of vaping was that it could be used to wean smokers off traditional cigarettes. While that has proved to be true in some cases, the sad truth is that vaping product creators found ways to do something altogether different: Lure new smokers/vapers with fruity, candy-like flavors not unlike the flavors/tastes of totally innocuous products. That gambit has worked in spades: A significant share of vapers are, as the CDC report indicated, young — and foolish, in that they’ve taken up a form of inhaling a kind of heated air-plus-who-knows-what even their recent ancestors have given up in droves.

Tobacco-smoking was well established among residents of what’s now the United States long before this nation was born. John Rolfe, a settler from England, is credited with being the first non-native to cultivate the weed, in 1609: Natives of what’s now Virginia had been cultivating it for centuries.

Sir Walter Raleigh, another Englishman, is credited with introducing it to Europe, in 1586. (The date discrepancy there is accounted for by the fact that, before Rolfe began following the natives’ cultivation practices, tobacco used and exported by European settlers was traded for from the natives, now generally referred to as American Indians.

Between 1901, early in the era of commercial tobacco products in the US, when some 3.5 billion (with a B) cigarettes were made and sold in the US, and 1964, an unimaginable number of ‘smokes’ were enjoyed by American consumers. Then, something happened: The US Surgeon General issued a report declaring that cigarettes were killers.

In a geological-time flash — 20, 30, 40 years in time as smoking advocates and critics conceive it — the word got out, and more and more people broke the habit… even as rules and laws were passed to make it harder to find places to smoke. Some (then more) offices, and office buildings, began banning it. As did hospitals, government offices, gyms… airlines.

When the airlines banned smoking first on planes then in airports, it was a big deal! That, many people said, was infringing on a ‘human right’. What, a right to poison yourself and, more importantly, others in your vicinity?

Over time, of course, anti-smoking rules became commonplace, and widely accepted.

Except, of course, by smokers and would-be smokers — members of youthful generations who only knew the ‘joys’ of smoking through old movies and vintage commercials. They wanted to taste this ‘forbidden fruit’ for themselves.

The stage was thus set for the entrepreneurs who launched the vaping craze.

News travels faster today than it did in the early 20th century. News of vaping-caused deaths is spread faster than was news of smoking-caused deaths.

Maybe, if we’re lucky, it will spread quickly to legislators, who have the power to ban a type of product that [1] serves no socially redeemable purpose and [2] is killing young people at a growing rate.