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Comment by jrace | Hacker News Reader

> Even though the intended use for these devices is a 2-5 second draw at no more than 2 draws before the device must be rested so as to not overheat, not every consumer uses the devices in this way or knows this technique.

> users should not be taking more than three draws per hour on average

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Even in fully legal store (up in canada) I have never seen either of those warnings.

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Three draws per HOUR?!

Pot smokers routinely go way way way over that limit. Is this a limit because THC levels will be supposedly deadly or because of something else (technical etc).

Public health / medicine has just gone off the rails. I believe pot smoking is bad for you, but where do they even come up with these recommendation.

I think it's one of those liability things like "don't put q-tips in your ear".

The amount of THC you would have to ingest to overdose is more than you could feasibly consume. In lab rats with zero existing tolerance to THC, the LD50 of THC is 36-40 mg/kg in a single dose [1]. For a 100kg individual with no tolerance, that means a single dose of 3600-4000 mg of pure THC inhaled continuously until consumed would result in death 50% of the time. That is an absurd amount.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004100...

Edit: And that 40mg/kg is the inhalation LD50 dose. For edibles / intragastric, the LD50 is 800-1200 mg/kg. So a 100kg individual who consumes 80000mg of THC-laced edibles. A standard gummy bear dose is 10mg, so a 100kg individual with no tolerance would have to eat 8000 of those to have a 50% chance of death.

Edit 2: FYI, the standard THC vape cartridges that are 1g of ~75-90% pure THC oil, which is good for 200-300 pulls of 3-5 seconds each.

When replying to someone that believes pot smoking to be bad for you, there might be a need to translate that 3600mg is going to 360 of those 10mg gummy bears. If the THC doesn't kill you, the 360 gummy bears in your gut are going to make you wish you were dead. Except I guess you'll be so high that you won't notice.

That was the inhaled dose. I edited my post to include the edible / intragastric LD50, which is 800-1200 mg/kg.

A quick google says 70 gummi bears in a pound, so 5.15 lbs for those who were also wondering.

In no way would an amount so little lead to death. Maybe if you aspirate vomit or trip and fall.

> trip and fall.

Not too impossible I guess, I've fainted from orthostatic hypotension after smoking too much before.

> The amount of THC you would have to ingest to overdose is more than you could feasibly consume. In lab rats with zero existing tolerance to THC, the LD50 of THC is…

Overdose and LD50 aren’t the same thing. There is a wide middle ground between a typical dose and a fatal dose where the effects range from distinctly unpleasant to potentially triggering a number of other health conditions.

The LD50 of THC is indeed very high, but I think the excess focus on LD50 has misled a lot of people into ignoring the other potential problems with excessively high dose, prolonged THC ingestion.

From my understanding the concern about vapes is super heating the chemicals inside the vape (or the vape itself). Also potentially over-heating the filament in the cartridge, or the metal conducting parts of the battery.

My guess is the restriction is based on those things.

That is correct, according to the article.

Not sure if that is an actual concern, or even an actual warning, but that is what the article states.

"Please drink responsibly."

I have a flavour-only vape that I got just to check out what were all the kid going crazy over these days - and never heard that kind of warning either

No disrespect intended, but this sounds more foolish than doing it due to being addicted to something!

It’s no more foolish than trying a mocktail to get a sense of what people like in a comparable cocktail.

Ordering a Shirley Temple at the pool or bar isn't the same as buying a whole device and special non-nicotene juice to use in it, ha.

No real hate, just weird — to me!

I think this is just a mistake or miscalculation on the author's part. I use one of these devices every day and anyone who's familiar with the operation would easily be able to tell when it's overheating; the vapor becomes uncomfortably hot and smells different. This will happen when you heat the element for maybe than 7-10s, the frequency per hour has never made any difference in my experience.

3 draws per hour?

I recently switched to vaping from smoking, and I hope that's not the case for nic vapes, because then I'm seriously overdoing it.

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