Tag Archives: VAPING

FDA crackdown on vaping flavors has blind spot: disposables

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WASHINGTON —
The U.S. government on Thursday began enforcing restrictions on flavored electronic cigarettes aimed at curbing underage vaping. But some teenagers may be one step ahead of the rules.

Parents, researchers and students warn that some young people have already moved on to a newer kind of vape that isn’t covered by the flavor ban.

These disposable e-cigarettes are sold under brands like Puff Bar, Stig and Fogg in flavors such as pink lemonade, blueberry ice and tropical mango.

The Food and Drug Administration’s crackdown narrowly targets reusable vaping devices like Juul, the blockbuster brand that helped trigger the teen vaping craze in the U.S. Under the new policy, only menthol and tobacco flavors are allowed for those devices.

Critics of the FDA policy fear teens will simply switch to the cheaper disposables, which are widely available at convenience stores and gas stations.

“They are very accessible and seem to be the new buzzy product,” said Dr. Karen Wilson, a tobacco researcher and pediatrician at Mount Sinai’s medical school in New York.

The FDA confirmed that the flavor restriction won’t apply to “self-contained, disposable products,” but only to rechargeable ones that use pods or cartridges prefilled with a nicotine solution.

The agency’s rationale: Reusable vaping devices are far and away the most popular with underage users, preferred by more than 60% of high schoolers who vape, according to survey data collected last year.

The FDA’s top tobacco regulator said it can still go after any vaping product that appeals to teenagers.

“If we see a product that is targeted to kids, we will take action,” Mitch Zeller, who heads the agency’s tobacco center, said in a statement.

Thursday was the deadline for makers of reusable e-cigarettes to stop selling fruity and candy flavors. Juul was already in compliance. It dropped its best selling mint and most other flavors before the ban was announced in early January and only sells tobacco and menthol.

At a congressional hearing Wednesday, the CEO of Fontem U.S., which makes blu vapes, was pressed to drop its vivid vanilla and cherry crush disposable e-cigarettes.

Fontem chief Antoine Blonde countered that its customers are adults, not children. Less than 3% of high school students who vape reported blu as their preferred brand, according to 2019 government data.

“We’re not aware of any issue caused by our disposable flavors,” Blonde said.

Sales of disposable e-cigarettes and all other tobacco and vaping products are prohibited to teenagers under the government’s new age limit, which went from 18 to 21 late last year.

High school student Philip Fuhrman says most of his New York classmates who vape have ditched Juul for disposables like Stig, a tiny e-cigarette sold in flavors like mighty mint and mango bomb.

They’re easier to hide because “they’re smaller and when you’re done you can just throw it away,” said the 16-year-old Fuhrman, who says he no longer vapes. He’s now an anti-vaping activist and his mother is one of the founders of a parents’ group opposed to youth vaping.

At $20 for a three-pack, Stig may not seem cheap. But Fuhrman and other teens say it’s a smaller investment than the $40 or $50 needed to buy a Juul device and a four-pack of pods. Furhman says teens will instead buy a pack of Stigs “for the weekend and then just be done with it.”

The makers of Stig, Puff Bar and Fogg disposables did not respond to requests for comment.

Analysts report that disposables are still just 5% of the nearly $15 billion global vaping market, according to the firm ECigIntelligence.

Researchers who study e-cigarette trash around high schools say they have noticed a shift in what teens are vaping. Jeremiah Mock, of the University of California, San Francisco, has been finding discarded Puff Bars in local school parking lots over the last three months.

Vape shop owners also say the market is changing.

Since the FDA announcement, distributors and manufacturers have ramped up their disposable offerings, according to Vapewerks owner Jeremy Gardner in Cumberland, Maryland.

“How do disposables get a free pass when they’re essentially the same thing as a Juul or anything else that comes with a prefilled pod?” he asked.

Gardner doesn’t stock his most requested brand, Puff Bar, but sells a rival disposable. Most of his business comes from larger, tank-based vapes, which are more popular with adults and allow users to customize flavors and nicotine concentrations. Those products are exempt from government flavor restrictions.

E-cigarettes, which heat a nicotine solution into a vapor, are often promoted as a less harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes but the FDA has not approved any vaping product to help smokers quit. The makers of all vaping products face a May deadline to submit applications for government health and safety review.

Mike Chang, owner of Master Piece Smoke Shop in New York City, says most of his customers who buy disposables switched from Juul after the company pulled its mint, mango and dessert flavors last fall. The company took that voluntary step under pressure from multiple federal investigations and lawsuits from state and local authorities.

The San Francisco company’s retail sales have fallen 35% since their peak last July, driven by the loss of flavors, according to Wall Street research firm Piper Sandler. Juul does not sell disposable e-cigarettes.

In a government survey last year, more than 1 in 4 high school students reported using e-cigarettes in the prior month. The next federal study begins this spring.

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AP videojournalist Marshall Ritzel in New York contributed to this report.

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Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP—FDAwriter

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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What we all know in regards to the US vaping sickness outbreak

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U.S. well being officers proceed to search for patterns within the tons of of significant lung accidents reported in individuals who use digital cigarettes and different vaping gadgets.

A take a look at what we all know to this point in regards to the outbreak and the investigation:

WHO IS GETTING SICK?

The most recent tally is 1,080 confirmed and possible instances in 48 states and one U.S. territory, together with greater than a dozen deaths. Well being officers say 70% of the sufferers have been male. Greater than a 3rd are youthful than 21, with sufferers ranging in age from younger teenagers to 75 years outdated.

WHAT VAPING PRODUCTS ARE INVOLVED?

No single system, ingredient or additive has been recognized. A lot of the sufferers say they vaped merchandise containing THC, the high-producing ingredient in marijuana. Others say they vaped each THC and nicotine. A smaller group report they vaped solely merchandise containing nicotine.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS?

Sufferers are coming into hospitals with cough, chest ache, shortness of breath, fatigue and vomiting. Imaging checks present lung accidents and docs can’t discover infections or different causes.

HOW SERIOUS ARE THESE ILLNESSES?

Most of the studies contain extreme, life-threatening diseases in beforehand wholesome folks. Many sufferers acquired oxygen. Some wanted to be placed on respiratory machines. Antibiotics did not work, and it is not clear but whether or not steroid medication helped.

“We don’t understand how properly folks will get well from (the lung accidents) and the harm could also be everlasting,” Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention stated Thursday.

WHAT ARE OFFICIALS DOING?

Even earlier than the outbreak, colleges have been struggling to crack down on vaping as a result of the gadgets are straightforward for college students to cover. Greater than 1 in four highschool college students reported vaping previously month in the latest authorities survey. Well being officers have warned for years that the recognition of flavored vape merchandise amongst youngsters may end in lifelong tobacco use.

With concern about teen vaping already excessive, the well being disaster spurred some states to cease the sale of flavored e-cigarettes or increase the minimal age for purchasing e-cigarettes to 21. Massachusetts suspended gross sales of all vape merchandise for 4 months, a transfer that’s been challenged in court docket. The White Home introduced plans to ban flavored vape merchandise.

On Thursday, the Federal Commerce Fee ordered Juul and 5 different vaping corporations handy over details about how they market e-cigarettes.

In the meantime, felony investigators from the Meals and Drug Administration are specializing in the availability chain to seek out out what’s making folks sick.

WHAT’S THE LATEST RESEARCH?

It’s not closing proof, however specialists who examined lung tissue from 17 sufferers say the harm seems to be like chemical burns, much like what could be seen in folks uncovered to toxic gases. Dr. Brandon Larsen of Mayo Clinic Arizona says he believes poisonous fumes are inflicting no less than a few of the diseases. The examine was printed Wednesday within the New England Journal of Drugs.

Incomplete lab testing by FDA continues to seek out THC and vitamin E acetate, a thickener, in a few of the liquids examined, however Schuchat cautioned: “There could also be loads of totally different nasty issues in e-cigarettes and vaping merchandise they usually could trigger totally different harms within the lung.”

HOW DO AMERICANS VIEW THE HEALTH DANGERS OF VAPING AND SMOKING?

Individuals imagine nicotine is an even bigger public well being risk than THC, in accordance with a survey by researchers at NORC on the College of Chicago. Practically all adults (90%) imagine smoking cigarettes is dangerous, and 81% imagine vaping nicotine merchandise is dangerous.

Fewer see well being risks in marijuana with 65% saying vaping THC is dangerous and 58 % of adults saying smoking marijuana that comprises THC is dangerous. The nationally consultant survey of greater than 1,000 adults was performed Sept. 19-24.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT E-CIGARETTE SAFETY?

Well being specialists typically take into account e-cigarettes to be much less dangerous than conventional cigarettes as a result of they do not include all of the cancer-causing byproducts of burning tobacco. And a few nations — together with the UK — have totally embraced vaping as a public well being software to scale back the lethal toll of conventional tobacco.

U.S. well being regulators have typically taken a extra cautious method. Partially, that’s as a result of there may be just about no long-term analysis on the well being results of the vapor produced when e-cigarettes warmth a nicotine answer.

The FDA, which regulates nicotine-vaping merchandise, has set a deadline of subsequent Could for all e-cigarette producers to submit their merchandise for assessment. Underneath FDA guidelines, solely merchandise that characterize a internet profit to public well being can be allowed to stay in the marketplace.

WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE RIGHT NOW?

Well being officers are urging folks to cease vaping, notably merchandise that include THC, and to get medical care if they’ve bother respiratory or chest ache after vaping.

Schuchat acknowledged a priority about black market merchandise. She stated states that license marijuana dispensaries are taking steps to ensure the merchandise they regulate are secure, however she added: “With all the info I have been seeing, I do not know what’s secure proper now.”

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AP writers Mike Stobbe and Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.

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The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives help from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Division of Science Schooling. The AP is solely accountable for all content material.

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Texas teen collapsed and would ‘not wake up’ after using vape pen

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A Texas high school student collapsed and would “not wake up” after smoking pot from a vape pen at a choir meeting, reports said.

The teen boy fell ill at the after-school activity Monday evening at Tomball High School and was rushed to the hospital, news station KTRK reported.

Another student, Ariel Scott, said that a female classmate at choir orientation gave the teen the vape pen, which contained THC, a psychoactive compound in cannabis, news station KPRC reported.

“The girl handed it to him. He hit it and passed out. He would not wake up,” Scott told KTRK.

School faculty called 911 and an ambulance arrived to bring the teen to Texas Children’s Hospital.

“He was not getting up so the ambulance had to come and get him on a stretcher,” Scott said.

Tomball Independent School District confirmed Monday that a student experienced a medical emergency involving a vape pen, according to KTRK.

“A staff member immediately recognized the emergency, assisted with the incident as the student became ill and called 911 immediately,” school officials said. “An ambulance arrived and the student was transported to a local hospital where family members were present. We have no new details on the student’s health at this time.”

The medical incident follows reports of at least five deaths and more than 450 cases of illnesses linked to vaping across the country.

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هل الشيشة الإلكترونية تسبب ماء في الرئة أو سرطان أو مضرة



لماذا المدخن يستمر في التدخين؟ هل السيجارة الإلكترونية مضرة؟ هل النيكوتين كمياته أكبر في السيجارة الإلكترو…

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