My office mate, an otherwise very sharp 25-y/o engineer, continues to vape. He started to get back at his parents for smoking. 
I guess he thinks he’s immortal or immune or something.
I worry that one day he won’t show up for work because of this stupid addiction.
That is my reaction as well.
As I mentioned in a GD thread, short-term lung damage is one thing, but what about the possibility (in my view, likelihood) of vaping ingredients causing slowly-developing serious lung damage? We could be seeing chronic disease in vapers many years from now.
Well, at least for the ones that don’t drop dead from it in the near term.
Why is anyone surprised that coating your lungs in propylene glycol is going to do bad things to you? Yes, it’s inert to the body but the crap that goes along with it isn’t. It may be moderately safer than smoking but that’s like saying walking into traffic is safer than running.
The estimates I’ve heard is that it’s probably 5% as dangerous as smoking so I’m not sure that’s a useful analogy.
And what’s the odd for it being more dangerous than not vaping?
Oh, sorry. How about vaping is as safe as walking into traffic instead of running blindfolded… When people started smoking cigarettes it was promoted as a health benefit. As more people are exposed for longer periods you’re going to see more complications arise. Sucking stuff besides air into your lungs is bad, period. There’s a reason masks are recommended to people who work in dusty environments like woodworkers and bakers as even inert substances there can cause pneumonitis.
Ok, you got me. For the fifth time I will finally admit there’s probably health effects to vaping.
So it’s been almost a week now and I have not vaped at all. I used to be a regular JUUL user. I also frequently smoke one hand-rolled cigarette in the morning with my coffee, but this is not consistently practiced. Maybe 70% of days. In the past week though, there have been numerous days where I have smoked a second cigarette later in the day. Either during stressful moments with work, or while relaxing after resolving stressful moments with work. (The real estate deal I mentioned in the OP is shot to hell, and while I am now at least free and clear of it, I missed out on a nice commission.)
I tried nicotine gum but could not take the burning feeling of the nicotine trickling into my stomach when I’d swallow the juice from the gum. It was like when I tried “dip” back in the day and accidentally would swallow some of the juice. Fucking gross.
The media has not done a great job of clarifying whether these vaping illnesses are related to THC oil vape, or nicotine vape like JUUL. Some articles I’ve seen have implied that the former, not the latter, is the culprit. But I think doctors are still studying it and trying to get to the bottom of the outbreak (so maybe it’s not the media’s fault - but they still lump all “vaping” together in the articles, when the truth is there are numerous kinds of vaping that are different from each other.) There’s a difference between nicotine salt vapor, and THC oil vapor. Oil is pretty substantially different in chemical composition from whatever is in JUUL pods.
A bit of a slog, but here. JUUL analysis.
They lump all vaping together because the investigators have not been able to rule out one method or the other.
There has just been another vape related death reported, bringing the current total to 6, and there are 450 cases in 33 different states that are being investigated.
So far there is no one thing linking all the cases together.
The NY State Health Dept has listed Vitamin E acetate as a likely culprit in most of the cases but cannot confirm a link to all the cases they are studying.
The CDC has not said anything yet about a possible cause. Their latest post is from 3 days ago
Even tho this is getting alot of media attention right now, it could very well be that these illnesses have been happening all along and it is just now that TPTB are making the connection. The American Lung Association has been sounding the alarm for about 10 yrs now and in Jan 2018 the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine released a consensus study report that reviewed over 800 different studies that includes these findings
[ul]
[li]A study from the University of North Carolina found that the two primary ingredients found in e-cigarettes—propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin—are toxic to cells and that the more ingredients in an e-liquid, the greater the toxicity.[/li][li] E-cigarettes produce a number of dangerous chemicals including acetaldehyde, acrolein, and formaldehyde. These aldehydes can cause lung disease, as well as cardiovascular (heart) disease.[/li][li] E-cigarettes also contain acrolein, a herbicide primarily used to kill weeds. It can cause acute lung injury and COPD and may cause asthma and lung cancer.[/li][li] Both the U.S. Surgeon General and the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine have warned about the risks of inhaling secondhand e-cigarette emissions, which are created when an e-cigarette user exhales the chemical cocktail created by e-cigarettes.[/li][li] In 2016, the Surgeon General concluded that secondhand emissions contain, “nicotine; ultrafine particles; flavorings such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to serious lung disease; volatile organic compounds such as benzene, which is found in car exhaust; and heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead.”[/li][li] The Food and Drug Administration has not found any e-cigarette to be safe and effective in helping smokers quit. If smokers are ready to quit smoking for good, they should call 1-800-QUIT NOW or talk with their doctor about finding the best way to quit using proven methods and FDA-approved treatments and counseling.[/li][/ul]
PS: Congratulations Lamoral on a week clean! Keep it up!
mc
I am somewhat chastened by mc’s spiriit. Congrats from me as well. Keep it up!
I lost my mother 2 years ago to complications from kidney cancer due to smoking and I have a lot of friends who still smoke. Too many of them have switched to vaping as a panacea, but ultimately anyone who can kick an addiction has my utmost respect.
I’m not exactly “clean.” I haven’t vaped, but I’ve smoked cigarettes. I’ve had one hand-rolled cigarette with my coffee in the morning, but no more than that except for last Thursday, and Monday of this week, when I smoked an additional cigarette later in the day. But I used to still smoke one cigarette in the morning and then vape the Juul all through the rest of the day. I was totally dependent on it too - I vaped it constantly. I used up at least a pack of pods each week, sometimes more. I went through five different Juuls - three of them were lost, two were destroyed when I inadvertantly went into the water with them. I thought it would be harder to give it up, honestly, but it wasn’t that hard.
How many cigarettes did you used to smoke before using juul?
I went through periods of either not smoking any, smoking one in the morning, or smoking a spliff with a combination of weed and tobacco, and then afterwards, smoking one additional tobacco-only cigarette. On rare occasions I would bum a cigarette from someone, usually at a show, or at band practice. For the past 2 years though, there would be weeks when I smoked one cigarette in the morning with coffee, OR vaped the Juul in place of the cigarette. It varied…sometimes I would get the craving for tobacco, go buy a pouch of Amsterdam Shag, roll one cigarette every morning until the bag was gone or until the tobacco was too dry to enjoy (which would happen sometimes because of the low rate of usage.) But when the bag was finished, sometimes I would just not replace it for a week or two or more. I’d just use the JUUL until the tobacco craving hit again - usually it would hit in the morning. I would sometimes have dreams about smoking that morning cigarette and wake up not having any tobacco and then go buy it.
It’s a weird relationship with tobacco. I’ve been smoking it on and off since age 18 and I’m now 33. And yet I think I could count the number of times I’ve smoked more than 3 cigarettes over the course of one day, on one hand only. I know, it’s odd.
Just for an update because I don’t know how widespread the news is yet (but it’s local, so it’s all over the place here). Someone a few counties over from me was arrested for producing THC carts. He and a few others were making something like 3000 of them per day.
Yep, that was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, or at least that’s where the press conference was held. Big bust, very organized production with 10 employees. Mostly THC cartridges. They’re investigating further to see if this operation is in any way connected to the recent illnesses and deaths.
The New England Journal of Medicine published correspondence about a very small-scale study today that suggests the issue is toxic chemical burns in the lungs, not lipoid pneumonia as previously suspected. They don’t know what the chemical is, so they aren’t a whole lot closer to solving this.
Here’s the original study: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1913069