The thing that sucks here is the health issues have nothing inherently to do with THC and everything to do with vaping a black market product that has shitty ingredients in it.<p>I live in CA where it is becoming more and more regulated. I have a 'church' down the street where I can buy stuff at a steeeep discount (no tax, lower prices)... but I go to the regulated places the next town over (higher taxes, higher prices) that do lab testing and have their products sealed with a lab certificate.<p>As soon as I learned that the underground trap shops were buying, cleaning and refilling used cartriges with god knows what I stopped going to the churches.
>Vaping of marijuana was at the root of a public health crisis that unfolded this summer<p>The fact that it takes the author two more paragraphs to elucidate that the illness was in fact linked to bootleg, vitamin E-containing cartridges is disappointing, but not surprisingly. That fact seems really material to the argument.
It's funny because for years, as the opening of the article suggests, usual teenage vices (booze, drugs, and sex) have been dropping contrary to 80s teen movie stereotypes. FWIW, apart from the potential concerns with inhaling vaporized anything--something people skeptical of vaping point to although the science hasn't really established if it is harmful or not yet, weed is certainly the weakest of drugs (including alcohol) wrt harm for the body.
I'm an avid user for many years, and when I used vaping pens for a couple weeks, I felt the damage in my lungs, it was uncomfortable. Burning oil was a little better but it still felt like the hot air was burning your lungs, and burning wax had a completely different problem where I literally felt wax on my esophagus and lungs the more I vaped. Never had any of these problems smoking from a bong. I'll stick to what has been tried and tested for centuries if not millenia.
The article starts with something that is, by most accounts, harm reduction among teenagers: “Teenagers are drinking less alcohol, smoking fewer cigarettes and trying fewer hard drugs, new federal survey data shows. But these public health gains have been offset by a sharp increase in vaping of marijuana and nicotine..." The statistics, unused in this article, are quite clear: alcohol, tobacco and hard drugs more harmful to personal and societal health than marijuana.<p>But then the NYT proceeds to whip up some nonsense about how harmful vaping marijuana is, staring, and really ending, as we have no clue how harmful this behavior is, with a quote: “'This is a very, very worrisome trend..."<p>This is fear mongering, pure and simple.
Here are the factors that come to mind regarding the popularity of vape pens.<p>1) Availability Bias - The weed pen can be on your desk or in your pocket. Coca Cola exploits this human misjudgement, and that's why you can have Coca cola all around the world. The takeaway is that you're more likely to consume because it is there.<p>2) Mobility - It's mobile, unlike a bong. Get high right before your favorite song at a concert. Whip out the vape pen.<p>3) Stealth A) (Form Factor) - I think these are becoming popular with teenagers primarily because, if a teenager wants to smoke in their parents house, and avoid detection from their parents, a vape pen is less obvious. The pen is objectively easier to hide than a flower setup.<p>B) (Stench) Vape pens don't smell as much. I've seen signs on businesses refusing service due to the marijuana stench on customers. People even smoke vapes in public and it's indistinguishable from vaping tobacco unless closely inspected or smelled. (The smell from vape pens exists, it's less noticeable than flower.)<p>4) Convenience - The steps to smoke a vape pen (push of a button and inhale) are simpler than the process of smoking out of a bong. We're dealing with stoners here! (Not all stoners are lazy, but many stereotypes are loosely based on truths.)
I don’t understand why everyone moved away from directly smoking the flowers so readily. I hated the idea of shatter/resin when I first heard it and there is no way I would use a vape pen.
Let them vape just like we, as a society, let people smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and consume fast food and sugar. I feel like the trend to outlaw things like kratom and vaping is so hypocritical, I can only assume it's because they compete against big tobacco/pharma, not any kind of altruistic research.
Imagine how many people would still be alive today, how many kids wouldn't have lost everything to truly harmful drugs, if this ridiculous prohibition had never been in place.
The piece is built for fear mongering but I'm curious how the developing brain of an adolescent will be changed from constant marijuana use and compared to if it had never happened. I'm guessing how the drug is used would also be important in the longterm outcome because someone using it to help with anxiety might benefit compared to a developing brain under a lot of anxiety.
Two of the worst seem to be pulegone (mint flavour) and benzaldehyde (almond). The heating of the compounds is what causes the changes they are OK to eat but not heat and inhale.<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/vaping-liquid-tests-1.5381363" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/vaping-liquid-tests-1.5381363</a>
> The rate of overall marijuana use held steady for high school students who reported using it once or more over the past year, but there was an uptick in daily use.<p>Marijuana use has NOT increased and more teens are vaping instead of smoking, consuming it in safer ways than ever before. Sounds like great news. Too bad the headline is clickbait bullshit.
That's wonderful. It's the most dangerous form of vaping and the most dangerous use of cannabis (aside from DUI), finding popularity with one of the most at-risk demographics.
Unlike other drugs (smoking, drinking) adults (at least the noisy ones online) very much want marijuana.<p>And because of that they are very poorly motivated to stop its use among teens.<p>So this isn't going to get better, it'll get much worse.<p>Adults also believe marijuana use is perfectly fine, and risk free, which may or may not be true for adults, but is not true for teens.<p>But because they believe it's risk free they aren't exactly telling teens not to use it.<p>And keep in mind: those adults who really want to use marijuana are the "nosiest" online, which is where teens get all their info.