The CDC's Botched Vaping Investigation Will Kill People
People are not dying because they were sucking on a Juul. I wouldn't vape, but if I smoked, I'd vape instead.
Guy Bentley writes at Real Clear Policy that heads should roll at the CDC:
For the past three months, the CDC's data showed a clear pattern. Those getting sick have been vaping illicit or adulterated THC. A tiny minority of patients claimed to have vaped just nicotine but were often found to be lying, most likely due to the fact that marijuana is still a schedule one substance.It should have been obvious to CDC that regular e-cigarettes were not and could not have been causing these illnesses. Commercial nicotine e-cigarettes have been on the American and European markets for more than a decade and are used by tens of millions of people.
In Europe, there is no such outbreak of vaping-related illnesses, nor is there one in Canada. According to the Deputy Director of CDC Anne Schuchat, the agency doesn't believe these illnesses were occurring in previous years but being underreported. Instead, on October 25, Schuchat told journalists on a telebriefing, "we think something riskier is in much more frequent use."
Instead of conducting a reasonable investigation and giving consumers useful advice, CDC has been deliberately ambiguous and helped spark a national panic.
The results of this will be ugly -- for years to come.
Jacob Grier writes at Slate that more people are likely to die due to lack of access to e-cigarettes than will die from vaping:
Reports of so-called vaping deaths have dominated headlines for months, provoking health groups, regulators, and legislators to call for bans on the products. It has been clear for much of this time, though, that the primary and perhaps only culprit is contaminants in mostly black-market cannabis cartridges. Testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found vitamin E acetate, a substance used to dilute some THC oils, in lung fluid samples from all of the patients it tested....This lung illness is legitimately scary and in urgent need of continued investigation and prevention. But we should keep the danger in perspective. Total deaths attributed to it currently number 42. The CDC estimates that 480,000 annual deaths in the United States are associated with smoking. That means around 30 times more Americans die from smoking-related diseases every single day than have died from the entire run of the so-called vaping illness. We become tragically inured to these deaths because they are part of a familiar landscape. Vaping is unfamiliar, so we react with alarm to any potential risk. The barrage of news stories on the topic make it difficult to respond rationally.
At the beginning of this year in an article for Slate, I warned that the moral panic over vaping may recapitulate the errors of Prohibition and the war on drugs. Unfortunately, there are now signs that this is the direction in which we are headed. In Michigan, police went store to store enforcing a ban on flavored vaping products and an emergency order from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer imposed penalties of up to six months in prison for violators. In Massachusetts, detectives surveilled a vape store, searched a driver seen leaving the location, and seized his device as evidence of illegal sales. Lawmakers there are currently working on a bill that will ban all flavored vaping products.
...Much like the substitution of driving for flying after 9/11 or fossil fuels for nuclear power after Fukushima, the substitution of cigarettes for vaping among current or even potential vapers would have lethal consequences. Modeling by public health researchers suggests that widespread switching from smoking to vaping has the potential to prevent more than 6 million premature deaths. But public perception lags behind: Americans increasingly disagree that vaping is less dangerous than smoking cigarettes, and there are anecdotal reports of vapers going back to smoking. Shortsighted policies advocated by anti-smoking groups make this perverse outcome increasingly likely.
...While reasonable steps should be taken to combat youth use of e-cigarettes, we should begin from the liberal presumption that adults are sovereign over their own bodies. Striking the right balance requires carefully weighing risks and refusing to give into panic. If we get that balance wrong, don't be surprised if, a few years from now, we see research explaining how irrational responses to this year's mysterious lung illness led to more preventable deaths than the illness itself.
I don't know if this is the CDC or the media reporting. CBS News, every once in a while slips up and reports that the problem is with black market vaping cartridges, but then goes back to reporting on "vaping deaths."
Hipsters have made vaping "cool" - much like cowboys and rebels in the '60s made smoking "cool." As a result, the prohibitionists are going nuts. They'll likely have as much success against vaping as they did against smoking - that is, very little. Smoking died gradually, weighed down by its own health issues. Let vaping die the same way. Banning it today only makes it attractive and a sign of rebellion.
Oh, and what about banning "flavored" vaping? To protect the kids? That'll have the unintended consequence of sending the kids to use homemade black market cartridges. You know, the ones causing all those deaths.
Don't believe me? Check out what happened when we raised the drinking age.
Raising the drinking age sent kids from beer to vodka. Underage college kids could hide the clear liquor in bottle of soda or Gatorade. Vodka, believed to be virtually undetectable, became the liquor of choice. Wonder why beer is declining and a new cocktail age is upon us? It's because we sent the kids down that path and as they reached adulthood, those were their drinking habits.
There are always unintended consequences.
"Vodka was the new poison, its primary virtue lying in its efficiency — a mere ounce was equivalent to a whole beer, so it was easy to sneak around, and it mixed with about anything. Gatorade, say. No RA would be the wiser if you were sipping from a Gatorade bottle." ~ Scott Johnston (Campusland)
Conan the Grammarian at December 2, 2019 4:26 AM
It is both the CDC and the media Conan.
The real issues seems to be taxes and prohibitionists. There are a lot of people (Trump is one of them) who oppose vaping because they also oppose cigarettes. Hence the ban it for any slightly related reason. They are just looking for a rationalization to do what they already want to do. And then there are the tax issues. There are very high taxes on cigarettes. Vaping is a relatively new product and the acceptable tax level hasn't really been set yet. Some places they tax cartridges by the milliliter. Others by the unit. Some taxes are high. Some are low. So the tax and spend folk are trying to get uniform high taxes set as the standard.
None of this is based on rational policy.
Ben at December 2, 2019 6:06 AM
What happens when the witch hunters run out of witches? the make new ones.
I R A Darth Aggie at December 2, 2019 8:13 AM
Related: the war on chronic pain patients.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/350033/
I R A Darth Aggie at December 2, 2019 8:18 AM
This is like Reefer Madness.
https://www.nola.com/news/healthcare_hospitals/article_0f35dc7a-10a4-11ea-a5de-734e0f90fca0.html
In North Texas, high school students caught vaping are forced to attend a disciplinary school for a month. In Alabama, school administrators removed doors from bathroom stalls to prevent students from vaping. And hundreds of schools have ordered vaping sensors for bathrooms, according to IPVideoCorp, which manufactures the sensors.
I realize I am elderly, but back in my high school days the school actually had a smoking area for students at the edge of campus. Not ideal, perhaps, but probably cheaper and more effective than installing sensors in the bathrooms.
That article also had this:
At one point, administrators at Calico's school offered iTunes gift cards to students who reported other students for vaping.
Besides the ineffectiveness of the snitch policy, do they realize a student in 2019 has as much use for an iTunes gift card as he does for a Diners' Club card?
Kevin at December 2, 2019 9:20 AM
It varies from school to school Kevin.
Some places still have smoking areas for students. Mind it is illegal for minors to purchase (though oddly enough not to use) tobacco products. Other schools have very draconian antismoking policies like this school.
Ben at December 2, 2019 11:33 AM
"...school administrators removed doors from bathroom stalls to prevent students from vaping."
What!! I've seen half a dozen kids completely engulfed in a cloud from a single vape pen.
https://2w6kxc22rrr9mabqt1mglgait6-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Vaping-1024x579.jpg
That might be what school administrators are saying but I'm not believing it. There's some other reason they want the doors off of the bathroom stalls - maybe a reason that parents wouldn't be so likely to tolerate. In the authoritarian government institutions referred to as "schools" - as in other types of fenced-in, highly regimented, authoritarian government institutions - the privacy of the inmates can be inconvenient; or maybe removing bathroom stall doors is part of the process of helping students learn to celebrate someone else's diversity. But they didn't take the door off of a bathroom stall so they could make sure no one was vaping in there.
Ken R at December 2, 2019 4:19 PM
"That might be what school administrators are saying but I'm not believing it."
Always a good starting point with those people.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at December 2, 2019 6:07 PM
“...we should begin from the liberal presumption that adults are sovereign over their own bodies.”
Except, of course, when it comes to adults wanting to use their body to have sex for money. Then many liberals — and, it seems, quite a few libertarians — suddenly want to deny that sovereignty to adults.
JD at December 2, 2019 6:50 PM
Amazing that, with all the harm we’ve known for decades that comes from smoking cigarettes, so many kids still start sucking on those cancer sticks.
My younger sister was the only one of us five kids that took up smoking because, of course, she thought it was cool.
JD at December 2, 2019 6:58 PM
JD:
As if conservatives and Republicans are all for making sex work legal. Or like they've ever respected the right of consenting adults to make their own decisions about sexual practices. Anyone remember the decision of Lawrence v. Texas? Guess which justices dissented? Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas.
But oh, yes. Let's pretend that conservatives respect the right of autonomous adults to make their own decisions regarding sex, and it's just those big, bad, evil liberals that are opposing it.
Patrick at December 2, 2019 9:45 PM
Patrick,
I think JD had the unspoken assumption that conservatives and Republicans were opposed to sex work.
Ken R,
Cold day I assume. Too bad they didn't take a picture of the guy just breathing who looked the same. Or he is vaping something rather odd.
Ben at December 3, 2019 2:37 AM
I must admit I am wrong on the vaping picture. Not being a smoker myself I forgot they do sell those packs with extra smoke for the smoker who still wants to make a cloud. My friends who vape don't buy the stuff. Though they do argue over fruit flavor vs. old fashioned flavors.
Ben at December 3, 2019 1:03 PM
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