Psychology Today: Vaping and ...

[LoveVanilla]

Vaping and ...

There continues to be a strong consensus among medical professionals that e-cigarettes are less dangerous than conventional cigarettes and that electronic cigarettes can be an enormous benefit if they help individuals quit smoking.

Additionally, evidence shows that vaping is more effective than other cessation tools when it comes to getting people to quit smoking. Recently, 900 people who wanted to quit smoking were recruited to ...

...appears that many individuals who stop smoking and start vaping merely change the delivery mechanism through which they satisfy their addiction to nicotine.

To reiterate, most medical professionals would agree that vaping is preferable to smoking and that e-cigarettes are beneficial as a cessation tool, but they are not harmless...

Most importantly, if our fervor to end teen smoking and to restrict high-potency cannabis makes it more difficult to obtain unadulterated products, this could push people to seek out vaping products via the illicit market—the source of products that contain vitamin E acetate. We need to be judicious and base our decisions on sound evidence.

 

[Rossum]

Overall, a decent article, but it still has factual errors.

Tobacco use among teens—via devices like those manufactured by JUUL—is on the rise after years of decline

Uhm, no, that's just wrong. There is no tobacco in those devices, only nicotine.

Tobacco contains a number of psychoactive substances besides just nicotine, some of which have synergistic effects that greatly reinforce the habit-forming effects of nicotine.

Vitamin E acetate closely resembles vegetable glycerol—the substance found in most cannabis vape cartridges and some vape juices—but is significantly cheaper to produce.

I believe this is also incorrect. Quality VG costs as little as $10 per gallon. I haven't priced Vitamin E acetate, but my understanding is that products like Honey Cut were orders of magnitude more expensive than VG. The reason they were desirable is that they were still cheaper than the THC distillate, but had physical properties that mimiced the distillate and made it difficult for the purchaser to determine how much the product had been cut.

Consequently, only those who used cannabis or nicotine products obtained from illicit sources should have been exposed to vitamin E acetate.

I've never seen a single report of Vitamin E acetate being found in nicotine vaping products.

 

[somdcomputerguy]

I think one of (maybe the only?) reason why vit. E Acetate was used over VG is because 'oil and water don't mix'. The cannabis in 'canna carts' is oil, vit. E Acetate is oil, and VG is water-based.

 

[Rossum]

VG is water-based.

VG (and PG for that matter) are not "water based". They are alcohols that are miscible with water.

I'm not sure whether THC distillate would mix with VG. My understanding is that Vitamin E acetate was a desirable cutting agent for THC distillate because it did mix, and, the important part, it had sufficient viscosity to make it difficult to determine how much the active ingredient had been cut via physical inspection, "the bubble test".

 

[Jman8]

Concluding paragraph

Most importantly, if our fervor to end teen smoking and to restrict high-potency cannabis makes it more difficult to obtain unadulterated products, this could push people to seek out vaping products via the illicit market—the source of products that contain vitamin E acetate. We need to be judicious and base our decisions on sound evidence.

Thanks Captain Obvious. But I don't think being judicious and basing decisions on sound evidence is on the docket for (teen) vaping. At least in 2020. Hopefully by 2025, the slow pokes will finally catch up to where sensible rational people have been since 2010-ish.

 

[somdcomputerguy]

VG (and PG for that matter) are not "water based". They are alcohols that are miscible with water.

Oops, my mistake. I knew they are both alcohols, and more easily mixed with water, it was just my poor wording that defined that as water based.