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Heads Should Roll at CDC after Botched Vaping Investigation
Real Clear Policy ^ | November 22, 2019 | Guy Bentley

Posted on 11/22/2019 8:38:56 AM PST by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has finally identified a primary suspect in the wave of vaping-related lung illnesses and deaths.

Examining lung tissue samples of patients hospitalized with vaping-related illnesses, 100 percent tested positive for vitamin e acetate, often used to cut marijuana oils. This was not a surprise to those who have been arguing that the cause of these illnesses is not the commercial e-cigarette market, but the illicit market for THC vapes.

For the past three months, the CDC's data showed a clear pattern. Those getting sick have been vaping illicit or adulterated THC. A tiny minority of patients claimed to have vaped just nicotine but were often found to be lying, most likely due to the fact that marijuana is still a schedule one substance.

It should have been obvious to CDC that regular e-cigarettes were not and could not have been causing these illnesses. Commercial nicotine e-cigarettes have been on the American and European markets for more than a decade and are used by tens of millions of people.

In Europe, there is no such outbreak of vaping-related illnesses, nor is there one in Canada. According to the Deputy Director of CDC Anne Schuchat, the agency doesn't believe these illnesses were occurring in previous years but being underreported. Instead, on October 25, Schuchat told journalists on a telebriefing, "we think something riskier is in much more frequent use."

Instead of conducting a reasonable investigation and giving consumers useful advice, CDC has been deliberately ambiguous and helped spark a national panic. This contrasts sharply with CDC's actions on E. coli last year.

On April 10, 2018, CDC announced an E. Coli outbreak with the source unknown. Just eight days later, the agency determined the cause was romaine lettuce from a specific region. The primary factor for their speedy conclusion was interviews with people who had gotten sick. They found that 93 percent ate Romaine lettuce. Although no common grower, supplier, distributor, or brand of romaine lettuce had been identified, the CDC didn't tell consumers to stop eating lettuce. Instead, they recommended that "If the romaine lettuce is not labeled, do not buy, serve, sell, or eat it."

Contrast this to CDC's advice on vaping, where more than 80 percent of patients interviewed admit to using THC. "Since the specific compound or ingredient causing lung injury are not yet known, the only way to assure that you are not at risk while the investigation continues is to consider refraining from use of all e-cigarette, or vaping, products."

No commercial e-cigarettes have been associated with these illnesses in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world. But the CDC is telling consumers to stop vaping altogether, even though the National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine (NASEM) says there is conclusive evidence that e-cigarettes are less toxic than combustible cigarettes. According to the Royal College of Physicians, the risks of e-cigarettes are unlikely to exceed five percent of combustible cigarettes.

The consequences of the CDC's advice have been devastating. More Americans now incorrectly believe e-cigarettes are just as or more dangerous than combustible cigarettes. A Morning Consult poll conducted in September shows the majority of people blame e-cigarettes like Juul for the outbreak rather than THC or marijuana cartridges.

E-cigarette sales have slowed, and the decline in cigarette sales has weakened. FDA may soon ban all e-cigarette flavors putting more than 100,000 people out work, denying safer alternatives to adult smokers, and sparking a never before seen black market in flavored nicotine.

The CDC's communication failure has even spilled over into the rest of the world. As a direct consequence of the CDC's miscommunication, India banned the sale of e-cigarettes entirely. India has 12 percent of the world's smokers and suffers from one million tobacco-related deaths every year. But thanks to a moral panic and mass confusion, a country that suffers more than most from smoking-related diseases, banned the most effective alternative to cigarettes ever invented.

If the Trump administration or Congress moves ahead with a ban on e-cigarette flavors, the only e-cigarettes left in America will be in tobacco flavors sold by tobacco companies. This calamitous situation is in no small part, thanks to the deliberate ambiguity of the CDC.

It should be a source of embarrassment that the public would be better informed on this issue if they listened to a vape shop owner or a cannabis website rather than the nation's top public health authority.


TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
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1 posted on 11/22/2019 8:38:56 AM PST by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget

One word. Snore

We have the opioid crisis. This stuff is nothing


2 posted on 11/22/2019 8:44:26 AM PST by Truthoverpower (The guvmint you get is the Trump winning express !)
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
"...the cause of these illnesses is not the commercial e-cigarette market, but the illicit market for THC vapes..."


3 posted on 11/22/2019 8:45:23 AM PST by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget

Science isn’t science anymore. Not mostly. It’s mostly just politics now. Because money.


4 posted on 11/22/2019 8:46:08 AM PST by ClearCase_guy (If White Privilege is real, why did Elizabeth Warren lie about being an Indian?)
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
public would be better informed on this issue if they listened to a vape shop owner or a cannabis website

Sure.

5 posted on 11/22/2019 8:55:19 AM PST by Drango (1776 = 2020)
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To: ClearCase_guy

The legit vaping industry players must have neglected to pay their protection money. Or paid it to the wrong people or political party.


6 posted on 11/22/2019 8:56:08 AM PST by one guy in new jersey
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget

Oh no, marijuana oil responsible for pretty much all vaping deaths.

Freepers who actively want smokers to die and proved it repeatedly by refusing outright to contrast the number of total vaping deaths since vaping began against the monthly cigarette related deaths will feel they are most affected.


7 posted on 11/22/2019 9:03:59 AM PST by MrEdd (Caveat Emptors)
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget

I’ve been saying it since this silliness all started. E-cigs have disposable cartridges. I even tried to take an empty one apart once, and I gave up after ten minutes and threw it away. You can’t refill those things. It’s these people with those cell phone-sized e-hookahs who are doing a ‘roll your own’ with their smoke juice and trying to add all sorts of stuff into the tank, a lot of dubious origin, and half the time to catch a buzz. *stops to puff his Vuse Solo menthol* Differentiate, world. An e-cig is shaped like a cigarette. The juice is where a regular cigarette filter would be. It’s a one-and-done. The others look like they should be on Darth Vader’s utility belt and belch like a steam engine.


8 posted on 11/22/2019 9:06:59 AM PST by Viking2002 (..........and Epstein didn't kill himself. Yeah, I went there.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Science isn’t science anymore. Not mostly. It’s mostly just politics now. Because money.


True science... following the scientific method is timeless. However, you are correct about the “science” we hear about nightly on the news. It is highly flawed, partisan, and is a tool to achieve a political result or achieve a monetary gain.

Global warming is the best example where data is selectively used, exaggerated, or ignored to fit the desired outcome. The simple fact that they do not include variable data from the heat source (the Sun) is proof of this.

Sadly, when we hear about “science” on the news it is more often “politics” foisted on an ignorant populace who know very little about science.

One of my favorite quotes -

Student: “Dr. Einstein, Aren’t these the same questions as last year’s [physics] final exam?”

Dr. Einstein: “Yes; But this year the answers are different.”

- Albert Einstein


9 posted on 11/22/2019 9:08:57 AM PST by volunbeer (Find the truth and accept it - anything else is delusional)
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To: ClearCase_guy

“Science” has been zombified by the leftist long march through the institutions.

It is now used as a club to pound the masses into submission to the elites.


10 posted on 11/22/2019 9:09:50 AM PST by cgbg (The Democratic Party is morphing into the Donner Party)
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
Who benefits?

The tobacco companies, and the government, who get more taxes from the sale of tobacco.

11 posted on 11/22/2019 9:16:44 AM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: Drango

A hell of a lot better informed than If they listen to you.

L


12 posted on 11/22/2019 9:19:35 AM PST by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: marktwain; Kaslin; LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget

Who benefits?

The anti-smoking cancer-fundraising bureaucrats in the FDA, CDC, air pollution globalists and their sponsors in the governments worldwide who HATE smoking (but tolerate the marijuana/THC smokers who support their liberal agendas!).


13 posted on 11/22/2019 9:23:25 AM PST by Robert A Cook PE
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To: marktwain
Worth repeating:

Who benefits?

The tobacco companies, and the government, who get more taxes from the sale of tobacco.

14 posted on 11/22/2019 9:24:20 AM PST by null and void (Convicted spies are shot, traitors are hanged, saboteurs are subject to summary execution...)
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget

“FDA may soon ban all e-cigarette flavors putting more than 100,000 people out work”

Wow! That many people are making those things?

I hope the e-cigs turn out to be ok if they don’t contain certain additives.


15 posted on 11/22/2019 9:25:20 AM PST by cymbeline
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To: cymbeline
It's already been proven that the Vitamin E acetate that the vape bootleggers were adding to Vape liquids for the Cannabis vapes is the culprit.

The CDC AND THE KNEE-JERK MEDIA should issue an apology to the Vape industry.

16 posted on 11/22/2019 9:34:50 AM PST by CivilWarBrewing (Get off my back for my usage of CAPS, especially you snowflake males! MAN UP!)
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget

This was pretty much known from day one. It wasn’t proven with tests like this but was the wide assumption. The “issue” was that some of the Vit E vapers were also nicotine vaping so they couldn’t scientifically rule it out; while a few of the victims denied vaping THC (which should have been viewed skeptically because they wouldn’t want to admit to a crime, or to their families etc) it is obvious now that they lied.


17 posted on 11/22/2019 9:35:04 AM PST by monkeyshine (live and let live is dead)
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To: cymbeline

LOL it’s not just the vape manufacturers; it’s the distributors, retailers, sales people, suppliers of packaging etc.


18 posted on 11/22/2019 9:36:27 AM PST by monkeyshine (live and let live is dead)
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To: LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
If the Trump administration or Congress moves ahead with a ban on e-cigarette flavors, the only e-cigarettes left in America will be in tobacco flavors sold by tobacco companies.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, the big tobacco companies would rather lessen their competition. Plus, they can afford more in their efforts to influence lawmakers.

19 posted on 11/22/2019 9:38:28 AM PST by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)
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To: lonevoice

I know you fallow the news on this product. Just in case you missed the latest, here is a key line coming from the most recent news:

“No commercial e-cigarettes have been associated with these illnesses in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world.”


20 posted on 11/22/2019 9:49:17 AM PST by Pride in the USA
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