A journalist, a vaper, and an excellent piece. Recommend
How vaping restrictions could send ex-smokers back to cigarettes
How vaping restrictions could send ex-smokers back to cigarettes
So I decided to give it a try. Within a week, I’d totally made the transition from smoking to vaping.
What I did notice was a sense of relief. After years of shadowing me, the specter of fear and dread had disappeared.
I tried to ignore the coverage — until I received a text from my mom with a link to a New York Times article, “Cases of vaping-Related Lung Illness Surge, Health Officials Say.”
“Don’t know if you’re still vaping,” she wrote, “but these reports are quite alarming.”
And they were. With every week came horrific new stories of injuries that resembled chemical burns, teens receiving lung transplants, and the growing tally of the sick and dead.
In the meantime, the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC had launched investigations into the source of the illness. They still didn’t know the cause, but had found evidence that cartridges containing CBD and THC were implicated.
In early September, the CDC released a statement emphasizing that its investigation was ongoing, and warning the public against using vaping products of any kind.
The warning heralded a tidal wave of anti-vaping backlash. A flood of media reports echoed concerns about the dangers and potential dangers of e-cigarettes.
Juul became the target of dozens of lawsuits over vaping-related injuries, along with fraudulent advertising practices.
State and city governments started proposing wide-ranging restrictions on vaping, with some banning their sale altogether.
Even my doctor told me I needed to stop vaping, warning that e-cigarettes were just as dangerous as smoking — maybe worse.
I knew there was a good chance that without e-cigarettes, I’d go back to my trusty Camels.
So I decided to investigate: Were e-cigarettes truly as dangerous as everyone said?
“From the very beginning, the CDC really ignored very strong evidence that this was related to THC products and not to e-cigarettes,” he said. “As time went on, the CDC finally was forced to admit that in fact this was being caused by THC vaping. The problem, though, is that it took them about two months before they finally admitted that, even though the evidence was pretty clear.”
By that time, the public impression had already been set — which Siegel said may have actually made the EVALI outbreak worse.
“I think that the warning the CDC gave was so vague, basically saying, you know, ‘Just don’t vape, don’t vape anything,’ that nobody really listened to it — certainly youth didn’t get the message that vaping black market THC products was extremely dangerous,” he said. “I think had the CDC been direct with our nation’s youth and just said, ‘Look, guys, you right now should not be vaping THC, period. It’s just too dangerous,’ I think they would have been able to listen to that, and I think that there would have been fewer cases.”
Some experts in the tobacco-control world think that this miscommunication — and the ensuing backlash — was no accident.
“I think undoubtedly that what we’re seeing here is a moral panic,” said David Sweanor, a Canadian tobacco-control expert and law professor at the University of Ottawa. “This is no longer something that’s based on facts, on science, on reason. We have all the hallmarks of the beginning of the war on drugs or the war on alcohol that brought Prohibition.”
Even unflavored Juul cartridges seem to have disappeared from the shelves of convenience stores. On a recent evening, I struck out at three 7-Elevens looking for tobacco-flavored Juul cartridges.
The next day, I stopped by a CBD shop advertising Juul cartridges, but found out they were only selling ones with CBD. The owner referred me to a smoke shop across the street with a Juul logo in the window. Again, they only had Juul-compatible cartridges — off-brand versions made by companies I’d never heard of.
Finally, I went to a vape shop, but they didn’t have Juul cartridges either — just empty ones that I was welcome to refill using one of their nicotine salt liquids.
One thing all the shops did have? Good, old-fashioned cigarettes, and plenty of them.
