In the News

During the past few weeks a consumer product has gone from vaguely unhealthful and annoying to a danger so intense that it needs immediate remedies from congress and the white house. Recent studies have shown that vaping or e-cigarettes are not as innocuous as the public might have been led to believe.

The vape shops sprung up as a response to cigarettes. They were supposed to be less damaging to the body and a modern almost benign way to smoke without smoking. But then some things began to happen.

One company was found to be using many times the normal level of nicotine in its cartridges. Doctors doing research found some lung issues with extended vaping usage. Oh, yeah, and some guy in the upper Midwest was busted for building a vaping cartridge business based on using marijuana oil to deliver a potent THC punch.

Finally, came the straw that brought lawmakers to rise to the surface and demand action. Six people died of vaping related illnesses.

Now schools in New Jersey are putting up anti-vaping detectors in bathrooms and closets. President Trump has called for action on the vaping industry and even our own Congressman Larry Bucshon has jumped in supporting the president’s call for the FDA to ban flavored e-cigarettes.

The numbers look like this. Around 5 million minors have said they have tried vaping. The CDC says it has identified 450 possible cases of lung illness believed to be related to vaping. And six deaths.

“People are dying from vaping,” said President Trump. “A lot of people think it’s great. It really isn’t so wonderful. We have a problem in our country. We can’t have our youth affected. People are affected. A whole generation is at risk.”

I firmly believe that the loss of any life is significant. But when you look at the numbers you have to wonder about the reaction to six deaths, especially in the wake of the gun debate in America. Each week dozens of people die of gun violence.

School shootings have become such a regular event that we can barely get from one to the next. This year Indiana put $19 million into school security grants to local schools. Hundreds of students have been shot or killed and yet where is the call for a ban on assault weapons and large magazines.

Perhaps the people in the vaping industry should have taken a page out of the NRA playbook and put $30 million into the Trump campaign coffers in 2016.

Then instead of having a “generation at risk” we might just have a number of young adults making poor decisions in the use of a legal product.

Mike Grant 
Washington Times Herald