COLUMBUS (WCMH) — Over the last three months, the vaping industry has come under intense scrutiny and the industry said they are being unfairly blamed as a whole.
Many in the vaping industry, like Jeff Kathman, are convinced the real blame is with illegal black market e-liquids containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and vitamin-E acetate.
“Oil should not be going into our bodies and what it’s doing is turning tissues and substances into fatty tissues in your lungs and filling your lungs up and basically the end result is death,” said Kathman, a board member with the Ohio Vapor Trade Association.
According to the Center for Disease Control’s website:
We do not yet know the specific cause of these lung injuries. The investigation has not identified any specific e-cigarette or vaping product or substance that is linked to all cases.
Here’s what the CDC is recommending:
Anyone who uses an e-cigarette or vaping product should not buy these products (e.g. e-cigarette or vaping products with THC or CBD oils) off the street, and should not modify or add any substances to these products that are not intended by the manufacturer.
The website also warns anyone using e-cigarettes containing nicotine to quit cigarettes should not return to smoking cigarettes.
Meanwhile, this sudden outbreak has resulted in a push to ban flavored vaping products. Kathman said that could turn out to be a deadly mistake because users will simply make their own at home.
“People will use the wrong products because A) they think they know better and B) somebody told them it would work,” he said. “This is not the recipe, a flavor ban is not the recipe to solve the youth epidemic. It is gonna do nothing but drive businesses out, develop the largest black market and starting possible injuries and deaths over homemade e-liquid and that’s not what anybody in this industry wants.”
The vaping industry and several doctors have asked the government to stop blaming vaping or e-cigarette usage as a whole for the recent rash of illness.
They said the industry has been around for a decade and the injuries have only just now started to pop-up.