It was specifically caused by black-market THC vape cartridges containing vitamin E acetate as a filler. This chemical was marketed to black-market vape makers as “Honey Cut”, intended to dilute or “cut” cannabis extracts while keeping the mixture thick so it looked good to customers.
Legit cannabis vapes don’t include fillers; a typical California dispensary vape cartridge contains ~90% cannabinoids by weight. Nicotine vapes are water-based rather than oil-based, so vitamin E acetate would not mix with them.
Vitamin E acetate sounds like a healthy thing — it’s a vitamin, right? — but it’s not. When it’s heated in a vape, it produces a variety of chemicals that would be entertaining to the organic chemist — but no good for your lungs. You don’t need to be inhaling alkenes or ketenes, to say nothing of carcinogenic benzene.
(Hey stoners! Don’t use black-market carts, just like you wouldn’t smoke “synthetic cannabis” aka “spice”. If you want to vape instead of smoking, and you’re not in a place with good dispensaries with lab-tested vape products, use a dry-herb vape and plain ol’ herb.)
Yep. the whole vaping industry got ruined because of this, and it wasn’t even related to said industry. I guess it’s just another example of what lobbying is capble of.
I’ve never used a nicotine vape product in my life.
I tried cigarettes once as a teenager and didn’t like them; tried a cigar once and threw it away.
I don’t like nicotine. I like beer and weed.
But the whole scare about nicotine vaping is utterly bogus.
Almost all of the harm of smoking is from the smoke — soot, tar, and carbon monoxide — and not the nicotine. Inhaling smoke is bad for you. It doesn’t matter if that smoke is from tobacco, or cannabis, or a forest fire. Inhaling smoke is bad for you.
If all the cigarette smokers could be switched to vaping overnight, keeping their nicotine doses the same but using vape juice rather than burning plants to get it, that would be a huge public health win.
The fact that regulatory agencies have gotten in the way of converting all the smokers to vaping, instead of gleefully endorsing such a change, is utter madness.
Yeah, the 2019-2020 vaping lung illness outbreak had nothing whatsoever to do with nicotine vaping.
It was specifically caused by black-market THC vape cartridges containing vitamin E acetate as a filler. This chemical was marketed to black-market vape makers as “Honey Cut”, intended to dilute or “cut” cannabis extracts while keeping the mixture thick so it looked good to customers.
Legit cannabis vapes don’t include fillers; a typical California dispensary vape cartridge contains ~90% cannabinoids by weight. Nicotine vapes are water-based rather than oil-based, so vitamin E acetate would not mix with them.
Vitamin E acetate sounds like a healthy thing — it’s a vitamin, right? — but it’s not. When it’s heated in a vape, it produces a variety of chemicals that would be entertaining to the organic chemist — but no good for your lungs. You don’t need to be inhaling alkenes or ketenes, to say nothing of carcinogenic benzene.
(Hey stoners! Don’t use black-market carts, just like you wouldn’t smoke “synthetic cannabis” aka “spice”. If you want to vape instead of smoking, and you’re not in a place with good dispensaries with lab-tested vape products, use a dry-herb vape and plain ol’ herb.)
Yep. the whole vaping industry got ruined because of this, and it wasn’t even related to said industry. I guess it’s just another example of what lobbying is capble of.
I’ve never used a nicotine vape product in my life.
I tried cigarettes once as a teenager and didn’t like them; tried a cigar once and threw it away.
I don’t like nicotine. I like beer and weed.
But the whole scare about nicotine vaping is utterly bogus.
Almost all of the harm of smoking is from the smoke — soot, tar, and carbon monoxide — and not the nicotine. Inhaling smoke is bad for you. It doesn’t matter if that smoke is from tobacco, or cannabis, or a forest fire. Inhaling smoke is bad for you.
If all the cigarette smokers could be switched to vaping overnight, keeping their nicotine doses the same but using vape juice rather than burning plants to get it, that would be a huge public health win.
The fact that regulatory agencies have gotten in the way of converting all the smokers to vaping, instead of gleefully endorsing such a change, is utter madness.