As some of us may know due to the ongoing media attention given to this problem, illnesses associated with vaping cannabis and nicotine have supposedly been on the rise. According to the CDC on Monday, there have been about 450 instances of people being hospitalized across 33 states and 5 deaths after developing an acute respiratory disease related to vaping cannabis and, or nicotine products. The deaths so far have occurred in Indiana, California, Minnesota, Illinois, and Oregon. There are several very important takeaways from their ongoing investigation. For one, most hospitalizations and deaths have occurred in states where cannabis remains illegal and involved illicit cannabis cartridges or carts as they are popularly known.
Some of the brands being sold in the underground cannabis economy that have been connected to the recent surge of vaping-related health problems are Dank Vapes, Chronic Carts, and West Coast Carts. With the above in mind, the safest thing to do if you have an illicitly purchased cart would be to dispose of it and try instead to rely on buying carts from reputable and regulated dispensaries with product testing that exist where marijuana laws are more sensible. If you do end up consuming illicitly purchased cannabis carts, be mindful of the following symptoms such as shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea, weakness, and tiredness. Make sure to seek medical help if these conditions ever begin to manifest in the days or weeks from when you last bought an illicit cart.
This problem can only ever truly be solved by ending Prohibitionist laws and allowing for a better-regulated drug economy. As above-mentioned, most of the reports of vaping illnesses came from states with more restrictive and prohibitive cannabis laws which indicates that not having a safe and regulated cannabis supply is actually increasing the harm for people who use and depend on this substance for its therapeutic, entheogenic or simply enjoyable effects.
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Furthermore, one similarity identified by FDA investigators in 10 of the 18 cannabis samples that they received was vitamin E acetate which is a cheap-thickener that when inhaled can produce a toxic effect similar to lipoid pneumonia. Even more alarming, the one death reported in Oregon occurred to someone who had apparently purchased a cart from a dispensary, so if you are going to buy a cart legally, make sure to select a product that has been tested for quality and other methods used to ensure that no extra additives or thickeners have been used. Apparently, there was a trend in July 2018 where pen makers began switching to vitamin E as a thickener since it worked without changing the viscosity of whatever ends up being in the cart. So far, at least three companies including Honey Cut, Mass Terpenes, and Floraplex Terpenes have been subpoenaed for selling diluting agents that contained vitamin E. This tragic story is eerily reminiscent of the increase in alcohol poisonings during Prohibition-era as certain bootleggers sought to cut corners in order to maximize their profits at the expense of the health and well-being of their customers.
(Image Source: Rolling Stone)
While we should take precautions by avoiding the purchase of illicit carts, it is also important to remain critical about how best to respond to this issue as one can see how prohibitionists might try to sensationalize these recent findings. Likely, they will claim that vaping is a new more dangerous way of consuming cannabis and ignore the reality that repressive drug laws enable an unregulated drug economy which increases the risks for harm and violence associated with drug use.
Moreover, I’d argue that most activities are often made incredibly more dangerous once they are prohibited and thus unregulated. Even though we should be taking this recent rise of vape poisonings as the serious public health concern that it is, we must also recognize the scope of this problem in context. For instance, while smoking cigarettes kills 480,000 people in the United States every year, we rarely see the same kind of public pressure and attention focused on that trend as we will likely continue to see with the outbreak of vaping-related lung diseases. Overall, the main takeaways here are to err on the side of caution by refraining from using carts purchased from unregulated vendors as well as be ready to challenge any paternalistic, anti-drug narratives that make seek to exploit this latest consequence of our disastrous War on Drugs.
