The Food and Drug Administration was created more than a century ago because for many years, the food and drugs Americans consumed were causing them to fall ill and die. As future generations discovered, product safety standards \u2014 just like speed limits, seatbelt laws, and public smoking bans \u2014 tend to save lives. Regulation, while often messy and imperfect, tends to work.<\/p>\n
This lesson is something to keep in mind when processing the outbreak of serious lung problems among vaporizer users still spreading across the United States.\u00a0According to the latest estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, the vape-related lung disease \u201cepidemic\u201d has of Sept. 12 sickened at least 380 people across 36 states, six of whom have died. Like the Seattle-area team who is Washington state\u2019s first confirmed case or the Los Angeles-area 18-year-old woman hospitalized last month, many victims appear to be otherwise healthy young people.<\/p>\n Amid the parade of victims, so far, no clear villains have emerged \u2014 aside from various parties\u2019 predictable hobbyhorses. Out of this noise, only one reasonable explanation for the sickenings has emerged. Someone is out there selling unsafe products. Consumers need safe alternatives, or at least safer ones, and a guarantee that that\u2019s what they\u2019re getting.<\/p>\n We need to legalize cannabis nationwide and properly regulate products in order to keep folks safe.https:\/\/t.co\/Txw3w0k8fu<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Juli\u00e1n Castro (@JulianCastro) September 11, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Most people sickened have experienced symptoms consistent\u00a0with \u201clipoid pneumonia,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0a rare condition that occurs when fat particles enter the lungs, resulting in severe inflammation. The oils in certain liquids or other solutions used in vape cartridges\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0be the source of the inhaled fats. Could be, but we don\u2019t know. And though the problem is yet to be identified, proposed solutions are coming hard and fast.<\/p>\n Libertarians who vape (and vote!) are casting President Donald Trump as a socialist turncoat for demanding\u00a0a ban on flavored e-liquids<\/a>\u00a0while the FDA can hammer out reasonable regulations. The FDA, meanwhile, which has failed to regulate vaporizers of any kind and this summer announced that any regulations would have to wait until 2022, looks very much like the epitome of regulatory capture.<\/p>\n Public health officials, anti-smoking advocates and doctors, who for years have been consistently warning us for years that nobody knows the long (or even medium!) term effects of vaping, are showing restraint and not taking an enormous \u201cI told you so\u201d parade, instead advising us not to vape anything, ever, until we figure this out.<\/p>\n And since for some of us, all matters are cannabis, the country\u2019s leading anti-legalization group capitalized on the fear and confusion to try and pin blame on \u201cBig Marijuana\u201d (despite the inconvenient truth that large or small, legal cannabis companies are forbidden from engaging in interstate commerce).<\/p>\n Because the vape illness outbreak is both poorly understood and affecting youth, it is the perfect trigger for a moral panic. And since they have affected a still-unknown amount of people, with the number changing daily, they are difficult to put in a rational context. THC products specifically and marijuana generally have received some blame \u2014 even though, as cannabis-industry trade groups pleaded for the public to remember, strictly regulated products bought in legal states have yet to be tied to any illnesses \u2014 and, it bears mentioning, the illness cluster in California occurred in a county that\u2019s chosen to ban legal cannabis retail outlets entirely, leaving demand to be fulfilled instead by the underground market.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, authorities in Wisconsin have made what appears to be the nation\u2019s first large-scale bust of an illicit vaping operation.\u00a0According to Chicago-based ABC7<\/a>, police arrested a pair of brothers who filled as many as 5,000 vapor cartridges per day with homemade THC oil \u2014 seizing 31,000 filled cartridges and 98,000 empties along with cash and \u201cdozens of mason jars with THC,\u201d the station reported.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not yet known if the brothers\u2019 cartridges, which sold for $16 each, were filled with any dangerous ingredients. But they could be! And it would appear that the mere existence of such a massive and massively profitable organization is proof that there is significant demand for vaporizer products, despite everything health officials have told us. The smart move, then, would seem to be what New York magazine business\u00a0writer Josh Barro<\/a>\u00a0suggested on Sept. 11 and what presidential contender Julian Castro echoed: legalize cannabis, and regulate it strictly, just like what has been done at the state level. This is the same model followed when canned food and patent medicines were felling otherwise healthy Americans. It\u2019s the model that the FDA has been failing to follow with JUUL pods. There is no legitimate reason why the regulators can\u2019t step in and demand merchants follow strict standards and to fine them heavily if they do not while removing their products from the market. This appears to have worked in states with a regulated cannabis market. It can be done on a national level.<\/p>\n It may yet turn out that there\u2019s some connection between vaping oil and suffering a lung ailment caused by excessive oil in the lungs. It might, it might not. What should happen is a recognition that the vaporizer epidemic exists on a long continuum. The free market, left to its own devices, will introduce all manner of products to consumers that may be dangerous or deadly. Profit is amoral in that way. Regulation may not solve everything overnight or halt wrongful or unfair deaths ever \u2014 ask any cyclist \u2014 but it seems obvious that it\u2019s where action should start. In this, the FDA has been delinquent.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0do you that the FDA should regulate vapes?<\/p>\n The post Legal Pot Isn\u2019t Villain in Vape-Disease Epidemic, But It Could Be the Solution<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Food and Drug Administration was created more than a century ago because for many years, the food and drugs Americans consumed were causing them to fall ill and die. As future generations discovered, product safety standards \u2014 just like speed limits, seatbelt laws, and public smoking bans \u2014 tendContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,4937,12494,119,12495,11899,12496,5017],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38230,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38229\/revisions\/38230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Legal Pot Isn\u2019t Villain in Vape-Disease Epidemic, But It Could Be the Solution<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"