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Comment by stjohnswarts | Hacker News Reader

It's waaaaaaaayyyyy early to blame this on "vape lung". Always be skeptical of people who have an agenda to eliminate something.

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The fact that the CDC is involved means this is beyond a simple agenda.

There is something going on. It may even turn out to be unrelated to vaping.

However, incidents like these are why the CDC exists.

I thought based on tv and movies that it was to spark a zombie apocalypse

Radium. Cigarettes. Asbestos.

We've seen it plenty of times when a product comes out and people with an agenda to make money off it say "buy this, it works" and then decades later it is discovered to have been toxic or harmful in some way.

Especially given the nature of this product, skepticism should be the default position.

Remember when the news constantly threw out countless articles about cell phones causing brain cancer? Remember, fear sells ads, so we should also be very skeptical of articles like these.

Because skepticism turns out to sometimes be unwarranted we should be skeptical of skepticism?

You can't have it both ways.

Parent poster is talking about fearmongering. Fearmongering isn't skepticism.

asbestos was used to make a safer filter: oops

Considering the lack of available facts in these articles, my suspicion is that it's not the ecig vendors who have an agenda in this case.

The big kicker is people didn't start all types of vaping 3 months ago. My guess is this is some sort of contaminated something (with a biological agent).

Heavy metal, lead, asbestos, radium, etc. don't cause 100+ people to be hospitalized in the span of three months, they work over decades.

There are tens of millions of people vaping across the world that have been at it for years, why the massive panic now that there is an isolated epidemic, especially since it is specifically linked to adulterated clandestine black-market products, and not to legitimate, laboratory-tested products?

Some skeptic’s questions:

1) which people? 2) what agenda?

People who believe anything that looks like smoking should be banned.

Puritans.

I was shocked by the "no vaping in public parks". I just can't believe that attitude towards non-harming social behaviors. Cigarettes at least had the excuse of the cigarette butts.

Then again, you typically can't drink a beer on a park bench in America, either. Sad state of "freedom" to be honest.

The town I went to college in lacked an open container law from 8am->2am (mostly they didn't want people to continue drinking while bars were closed). It was....entirely fine? We'd sometimes get drinks at the bar then walk home with them and this was entirely legal.

This town had other problems but I'm not sure if this was one of them.

frankly I don't know, but the US seems to be taking a very different approach than other western countries. most countries in Europe seem to be taking a much more measured approach, with some of the state health agencies unequivocally recommending vapes for smoking cessation.

generally, the US seems to be much more permissive towards citizens making bad health decisions (including much tamer warnings on cigarette packs) so I think it's worth asking why vaping is an exception. it makes me at least a little suspicious, although I'm not sure who to point the finger at now that big tobacco companies are acquiring stakes in vape companies.

as a final aside, consider how absurd it is that vapes are banned in SF but you can still buy actual cigarettes at any convenience store.

Completely agree. The case was clearly a result of bad ingredients -- yet it has been flogged by the media and prohibitionists as proof that vaping is just as dangerous as tobacco.

I, for one, embrace vapetopia -- the cognitive libertarian's dream of mental states on demand.

> The case was clearly a result of bad ingredients

The fact that California is also seeing incidents would seem to argue against this at least somewhat.

It's certainly possible for this to be bad ingredients, but most of the cannabis-based stuff is mostly legal in California, so there's a decent negative feedback loop if you supply people with garbage.

Right. The usage by millions without issue would speak to the likelihood of either a bad batch or a sensitive individual?

I disagree with your last point. Up until the very recent explosion of 'pod mods' following the success of Juul, THC cartridges were (and still in a lot of cases are) most likely to be using CE4 style atomisers, or cartomisers/clearomisers, or any other technology that was in the process of being replaced due it being dated back when I started vaping over 5 years ago. Even now these THC cartridges are taking something with the viscosity of honey and sticking it into devices designed specifically for nicotine containing VG/PG.

This entire setup for vaping THC IS garbage. It's just more convenient and cheaper than the products designed specifically for THC methods

be skeptical of people who don't want another generation of smokers? should I be skeptical of them or you?

So don't smoke. There you've done your part.

Smoking and vaping, unlike other vices like drinking or hard drugs, have the property of dragging in all of your entourage should they want it or not.

There's a very toxic part of our society who wants to control what millions other people do, "for their own good." This type of article is a dog whistle to those type of people.

yea, it's most people that are like that. i think libertarians letting shitting things happen is far worse.

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