As of Nov. 8, 40 people died from vaping related illnesses and over 2,000 have been treated for similar causes throughout the US.
The fight against cigarette smoking created the epidemic of vaping, which young people were made to believe didn’t contain nicotine.
“Even though they claimed that they (Juul, a vaping company) created vaping for a way for people to stop smoking- you get everybody off of cigarettes, then they go out of business, so they started targeting the youth market,” Lisa Wolff, senior manager of the Center for Humanistic Change,” said.
Wolff has been working with the CHC for 6 years and is a reformed cigarette smoker. She visited NCC on Nov. 14 to educate students and faculty on the effects of vaping on their health.
Vaping devices come in different shapes and sizes. “Vaping with Juul is consuming 41.3 mg of nicotine—the equivalent of smoking at least one pack of cigarettes,” Wolff said.
Wolff said, “When the company first started, they were nicotine-free, but a year or two ago, the campaign wasn’t doing very well, and that’s when the focus shifted. “
“Doctors found prominent effects similar to the disease, ‘popcorn lung’ in vape users,” Wolff said, ” It causes difficulty breathing because of restricted airways, but doctors say it’s the THC that causes people to get extremely sick, or worse.”
Wolff stated 300-400 chemicals are found in cigarettes and now, most of them are in vape juice.
“When this first came out, most kids thought it was water in there. A lot of people did because they called it vapor… and they thought it was flavored water, and it’s not,” Wolff said.
People have been misled about what’s contained in vape juice for so long that when Wolff listed some of the chemicals, her audience was stunned into silence.
The vape juice contains arsenic, lead and lithium. They are found in devices people use in their everyday lives.
Wolff said, “That’s basically what you’re putting into your lungs; aerosol. They didn’t call it ‘aerosol-ing’, they called it vaping, for all these reasons. Because vaping doesn’t sound bad, ‘aerosol-ing’ does.”
What makes vaping worse, anyone who spends a lot of time with a friend who vapes is exposed to second-hand aerosol or third-hand exposure because vape lingers in confined spaces.
There are over 15,000 tobacco flavors available for vaping and even though they’re supposed to be a substitute for nicotine, they aren’t.
Vaping is a risk factor and should be taken just as serious as cigarette smoking, because being aware and trying to prevent what’s predicted, is better than not knowing and facing the consequences.