Comments

1

Leafly has been doing great reporting on this.
https://www.leafly.com/news/health/toxic-vaping-vapi-evali-lung-injury-rise-and-fall-of-vitamin-e-oil-honey-cut

2

I see no intention to remove the ban on flavors despite the already recognized (nee specifically stated) desire of SBOH and the prevention community to prevent youth consumption rather than address the public health issue posed by largely unregulated cartridges/oils. This was a failure of enforcement in the unregulated market first & foremost.

As I testified in SBOH's circus of a meeting, failure to address root cause, making no distinction between nicotine vape and the highly regulated adult-use Cannabis market (i502 licensees), and removing an ingredient they knew was highly unlikely to be a driver of the public health "crisis" (which was minimized in Washington by having a regulated adult use market!), has driven folks back underground to risk greater exposure to these materials that have been the suspected culprits all along and/or inadvertantly sent people back to less expensive cigarettes for their unflavored nicotine hit. While I'm no apologist for nicotine Vapes, I am a supporter of the differentiation between what was banned and the public health "crisis" underlying DOH, SBOH, and Inslee's executive order - they failed in their duty to address that function and instead went on a crusade against flavors.

I get the political opportunity, but what of the next crisis that can be addressed with a tangential "solution"? Chapeau to those prevention folks that got their win, I just wish they hadn't lumped all vendors & both separable industries together just because they couldn't police the underground market that still is hearty competition with the regulated, quality assurance/safety tested, and highly taxed market (up to 47% of the final consumer price in adult use Cannabis).

Good luck getting folks behind a solution to the next crisis when all testimony to the likely cause was disregarded in this case, what amounted to sham "listening." Businesses and a large number of employees were harmed in the process of not protecting a single set of lungs from the real culprit.

3

I'm not surprised, the vape industry is basically a gigantic experiment anyway. Unlike tobacco and ganja flower, there's no precedent for so many people inhaling so many different chemicals in propylene glycol, glycerol, etc.

Whenever I see a vaper exhaling huge clouds of vapor, my gut instinct tells me it can't be healthy. I hope for their sake my instinct is wrong. Why is a toothless voluntary ban Washington state's first response? One would think protecting vaper's health would be the LCB's highest priority.


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