Is vaping causing illness?
Vaping has become a hot-button topic in the last six months. This is mostly because of the heavily publicized deaths attributed to vaping, as well as the fact that a large percentage of those who vape are teenagers or young people. Thought most college campuses now are smoke-free, you’d be hard pressed to find a college student that doesn’t own a Juul or some other kind of vaping device, or hasn’t at least tried one at some point. You’d also have to have been living under a rock to not notice the many vape shops and e-cigarette dealers that have popped up all over the area in the last couple of years.
Recently, New York City reported the death of a Bronx teenager due to vaping. The seventeen-year-old victim is in addition to 18 vaping-related deaths confirmed by the CDC as of October 1, 2019. A total of 1,080 lung injury cases associated with e-cigs or vaping products were reported to the CDC from 48 states as of October 1, 2019. The main concern in with THC vaping products. The CDC states that findings suggest that products with the THC compound play in role in vaping-related illness.
Just this past September, Wake Forest Baptist Hospital reported that two people in their twenties were on life support after developing a serious lung disease, and the fault may lie with e-cigarettes containing liquid THC.
Aside from the illness and in some cases, deaths, that vaping THC products can result in, the North Carolina Attorney General believes that vaping companies are aggressively marketing their products to young people and are not using sufficient age verification. Stein is suing several leading vaping companies under North Carolina’s unfair and deceptive trade laws. Stein first sued the popular vape corporation Juul in May of this year, and this past August announced suit against eight more companies. There are preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders stopping the sales of vaping products in the state by several companies while litigation continues.
The future of vaping in North Carolina remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, if the illnesses and deaths continue to rise, the debate about vaping isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.