{"id":38473,"date":"2019-09-26T15:00:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T23:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2019\/09\/26\/the-great-vaporizer-panic-is-a-grifters-paradise\/"},"modified":"2019-09-27T00:38:53","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T08:38:53","slug":"the-great-vaporizer-panic-is-a-grifters-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2019\/09\/26\/the-great-vaporizer-panic-is-a-grifters-paradise\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Vaporizer Panic Is a Grifter\u2019s Paradise"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never want a serious crisis to go to waste\u2026 it\u2019s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.\u201d \u2013 Rahm Emmanuel<\/em><\/p>\n

Nobody knows exactly what\u2019s caused 530 Americans to fall ill with vaping-associated pulmonary illness, nine of whom are dead, after using vaporizer products \u2014 some with THC oil, some with nicotine or other flavored \u201cvape juices,\u201d some who used both.<\/p>\n

And yet somehow, many people know exactly what to do. Conveniently, it\u2019s exactly what they\u2019ve always wanted to do, well before the first vape-related illness was made public.<\/p>\n

From pushing outright bans<\/a>\u00a0(that seem destined only to help the underground market, where many of the vape carts in question originated) to shamelessly pushing misinformation to prop up their preferred hobbyhorse, the confusion and very real fear are providing opportunistic grifters the perfect cover.<\/p>\n

Though there are some commonalities \u2014 the use of vape products, symptoms including shortness of breath, chest tightness, dizziness, and vomiting, consistent with lipiod pneumonia \u2014 both the identity of the offending products as well as the potentially deadly contaminant within are still not known, as Oregon Health Authority spokesman Jonathan Modie told Cannabis Now on Tuesday. To date, Oregon \u2014 where cannabis is legal and sold in stores regulated by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission \u2014 counts five victims and one fatality. All are believed to have visited legal dispensaries and purchased vaporizer cartridges\u2014but whether it was those products or something else that caused them to fall ill just isn\u2019t known yet, Modie said.<\/p>\n

Variations of this \u201cwe don\u2019t know yet, it\u2019s too early to tell\u201d are what you\u2019ll hear from health officials on every level, from the states where vaporizer products are sold (and at least in the case of cannabis products sold at dispensaries, regulated) to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and federal Food and Drug Administration. The FDA is in the process of analyzing cartridges sent by the states for testing.<\/p>\n

Until the exact cause can be identified, the best course of action is to stop vaping altogether,\u00a0as California Department of Public Health officials advised on Tuesday<\/a>. In that state, home to both the largest legal and illegal cannabis markets in the world \u2014\u00a0as well as an enormous wholesale market where bootleg vaporizer cartridges<\/a>\u00a0and potentially harmful thickening agents are available for cash on the spot \u2014 as many as 90 people have fallen ill, with two deaths. But again, the cause is not known. \u201cThere are numerous unknown factors at this time, and due to the uncertainty of the exact cause, it is our recommendation that consumers refrain from vaping until the investigation has concluded,\u201d said Charity Dean, a physician and assistant director of the California DPH.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, elected officials who have never really liked marijuana from the beginning are moving to ensure that the only place cannabis vaping products will be available is the underground market<\/a>. On Tuesday, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker \u2014 who vehemently opposed marijuana legalization in 2016,\u00a0before deciding to accept political contributions from the industry<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 announced a four-month ban on all vaping products, cannabis and nicotine.<\/p>\n

Massachusetts\u2019s proposed ban is the country\u2019s strictest by far. Other states to enact bans, like Michigan, where cannabis is also legal, did not include marijuana in its ban as Baker did.<\/p>\n

Though public-health officials said they would devote extra resources to cigarette users to help keep them from taking up smoking to get their nicotine fixes, there doesn\u2019t appear to be any such provision for cannabis users. They can smoke weed \u2014 but then again, with public smoking bans and strict rules on cannabis use in apartments and elsewhere, can they?<\/p>\n

Though in some states sales of vaporizer cartridges\u00a0have been outpacing sales of traditional cannabis flower<\/a>\u00a0(use of which has not been associated with deaths or serious lung ailments) in the wake of the crisis, the public appears to be heeding health officials\u2019 advice. Sales of vape devices at legal dispensaries in states like Oregon have plummeted \u2014 leaving a gaping inefficiency in the market that online retailers operating in a wholly unregulated space have been happy to fill,\u00a0as the Wall Street Journal reported.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

This is a terrible decision. Purposely pushing people into the illicit market \u2014 precisely where the dangerous products are \u2014 goes against every principle of public health and harm reduction. It is dangerous, short-sighted, and undermines the benefits of legal regulation. https:\/\/t.co\/57OaVYf5nY<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Shaleen Title (@shaleentitle) September 24, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At least so far, the vape crisis\u00a0hasn\u2019t upended<\/a>\u00a0long-awaited and still-popular plans to legalize cannabis. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state moved to limit the sales of flavored e-liquids, said Tuesday that he remains \u201cserious\u201d about legalization, but will push for some sort of regional framework that would see New York, Connecticut and New Jersey share similar laws.<\/p>\n

But not for lack of trying. Also on Tuesday, America\u2019s leading anti-legalization group used the crisis \u2014 and specifically Massachusetts Gov. Baker\u2019s announced ban \u2014 to spread misinformation. Specifically, Kevin Sabet, executive director of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (which from the beginning has labeled the crisis the #PotVapingCrisis, happy to ignore the teens and other victims who publicly copped to using JUUL pods and nicotine products) capitalized on the confusion to push the line that the offending products had all been purchased from legal outlets.<\/p>\n

When confronted with the statements from the Oregon Health Authority and others maintaining that it was too early to make such a pronouncement, Sabet declined to comment.<\/p>\n

In this way, the vaping crisis has something for everybody \u2014 everybody except those of us curious to know exactly what\u2019s happening, who to blame, and how to stop it.<\/p>\n

TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0do you think \u201cvaping crisis\u201d is overblown?<\/p>\n

The post The Great Vaporizer Panic Is a Grifter\u2019s Paradise<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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\nRead More: The Great Vaporizer Panic Is a Grifter\u2019s Paradise<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou never want a serious crisis to go to waste\u2026 it\u2019s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.\u201d \u2013 Rahm Emmanuel Nobody knows exactly what\u2019s caused 530 Americans to fall ill with vaping-associated pulmonary illness, nine of whom are dead, after using vaporizer products \u2014Continue 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":[50,12494,12568,119,871,5491,12569],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38473"}],"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=38473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38474,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38473\/revisions\/38474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}